Medical News Today describes Jefferson University Hospital's use of cone beam CT to to precisely focus the linear accelerator to spare as much healthy tissue as possible during therapy. Excerpts below.
Link: Radiation Oncologists Use Cone Beam CT
While one of the Holy Grails in radiation oncology is to spare as much healthy tissue as possible during therapy, patients undergoing treatment for weeks at a time physically change. Patients can lose weight during a period of therapy. They might lose or gain fluid. Tumors may shrink or unfortunately, continue to grow. As a result, radiation target sites change, which can be problematic for treatment.
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson are among the first centers in the nation to study the effect of incorporating a new technology - cone beam CT - into a source of radiation, namely a linear accelerator, in an attempt to find an answer to this vexing problem.
The technology creates three-dimensional axial CT slices of a patient's tumor, enabling therapists and doctors to compare these images with initial treatment planning images to determine how precisely focused the radiation set-up is. They can then make position adjustments if necessary to deliver a more targeted therapy to the patient. The hope is that this technology will lead to more highly customized radiation treatments, where higher doses are directed at the tumor while sparing the patient's normal body structures.In cone beam, the CT scanner is attached to a radiation delivery machine. Prior to the actual treatment, a set of 3-dimensional CT scan images is obtained. This is compared to the conventional CT scan that was used for planning the patient's radiation treatment. If there are any differences in the patient's current position, this is corrected before treatment is actually given.
Comments