Speaker
Description
Radiation therapy (RT) is one of the primary modalities for the treatment of cancer with approximately 50% of the cancer patients having some form of RT during their care. RT treatment has advanced considerably in the last decade through the development of improved imaging and radiation modelling to predict dose delivery to individual patients, and of advanced equipment operating dynamically under computer control to better deliver the radiation to the patient. The progress has enabled complex intensity modulated and volumetric radiation delivery techniques (IMRT and VMAT) that provide precise dose sculpting so that treatment targets receive the high doses required for tumour control while healthy tissue toxicity and damage is minimized. But the individual steps in patient treatment are complex, driving a clinical need for extensive quality assurance including the validation of the dose delivery at various levels. For example, the integrity of the dose delivery must be verified initially when a new treatment technique is commissioned and implemented, and then, perhaps again, immediately prior to an individual patient’s treatment. There are considerable technical challenges in making sure that the intended dose delivery is achieved since conventional point and planar dosimetry techniques do not provide full three dimensional (3D) dose data. In Kingston this clinical requirement has driven an interdisciplinary research effort involving clinical medical physicists, chemical engineers and computer scientists to advance three dimensional dosimetry techniques. In this talk I will review the clinical demands associated with modern RT dose delivery validation, describe the development of 3D dosimetry particularly using gel dosimeters, describe the fundamental science that informs the development of these new dosimeters and makes their use clinically practical, and, finally, present how new 3D dosimetry systems can be used with other dosimetry techniques to guide clinical practice.
