Jennifer Matthews: Ruben Matienzo has surrounded himself with family and faith for nearly 70 years.
Ruben Matienzo: It has helped me all through my life, dear. With God, all things are possible.
Jennifer Matthews: That includes surviving cancer. Ruben was diagnosed with prostate cancer last December.
Ruben Matienzo: I pray for help. I pray for peace ... morning, noon, whenever I get in my machine for my treatment.
Jennifer Matthews: That machine is this, a new medical innovation called Helical Tomotherapy.
Dr. Patrick Kupelian: It is a much more elegant way of delivering radiation. 'Tomo' is essentially the Greek word for slice, and 'Therapy' is obviously therapy, so it is treatment by slices.
Jennifer Matthews: To radiate the tumors, patients take a daily journey through this. Doctor Patrick Kupelian affectionately calls it a doughnut. It takes images of patients' bodies during treatment.
Dr. Patrick Kupelian: Immediately before the treatment, we get those images, fine tune the position or modify whatever we need to modify, and then turn the beam on.
Jennifer Matthews: Those real-time images from the spinning X-ray tube help doctors radiate tumors with deadly accuracy. Treatments are altered to compensate for patient movement and the changing shape of the tumor.
Dr. Patrick Kupelian: It's a slice that gets treated, and it ends up being a helix. So, it's just rotating, and the couch is moving.
Jennifer Matthews: Ruben is in the midst of treatment. He credits more than the machine with his success so far.
Ruben Matienzo: You know, God has to give us technology, and then we are going to go with this technology and see how far it takes us.
Jennifer Matthews: Now, he prays this technology will take him to the finish line cancer-free. This is Jennifer Matthews reporting.
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