Radiobiological limitations for dose escalation in external radiotherapy are presented. Biological and clinical concept of brachytherapy boost to increase treatment efficacy is discussed, and different methods are compared. Oncentra Prostate 3D conformal real-time ultrasound-guided brachytherapy is presented as a solution for boost or sole therapy.

BACKGROUND Although two-dimensional (2-D) monolayer cell cultures provide important information on basic tumor biology and radiobiology, they are not representative of the complexity of three-dimensional (3-D) solid tumors. In particular, new models reproducing clinical conditions as closely as possible are needed for radiobiological studies to provide information that can be translated from be...

Nuclear emulsions of the Ilford K series, exposed to X-rays from 15 to 150 kVp and systematically underdeveloped, exhibit supralinear blackness--exposure curves ranging from 1- to 4-hit in character, and whose shape is the same at all excitation voltages. Processing can be so adjusted that the curve shape is well represented by the alpha--beta model, and matches an experimental dose--response c...

Two methods were proposed for determining alpha-particle fluence for radiobiological experiments. The first involved calculating the probabilities of hitting the target for alpha particles emitted from a source through Monte Carlo simulations, which when multiplied by the activity of the source gave the fluence at the target. The second relied on the number of chemically etched alpha-particle t...

Glioblastoma is the most frequent and malignant brain tumour. For many years, the conventional treatment has been maximal surgical resection followed by radiotherapy (RT), with a median survival time of less than 10 months. Previously, the use of adjuvant chemotherapy (given after RT) has failed to demonstrate a statistically significant survival advantage. Recently, a randomized phase III tria...

OBJECTIVE To compare the radiobiological response between simultaneously dose-escalated and non-escalated intensity-modulated radiation therapy (DE-IMRT and NE-IMRT) for patients with upper thoracic esophageal cancer (UTEC) using radiobiological evaluation. METHODS Computed tomography simulation data sets for 25 patients pathologically diagnosed with primary UTEC were used in this study. DE-I...

PURPOSE We present a framework, in which we compare a conventional standard dose of 50 Gy in 25 fractions with accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) using electronic brachytherapy (eBT). We discuss how radiobiological modelling enables us to establish a framework, within which we can compare external beam radiotherapy (EBRT). This leads to a determination of the shell of isoeffect in br...

There is strong evidence that ionizing radiation increases cancer risks at high doses (e.g., >or=1 Gy), and persuasive, if controversial, epidemiological evidence that cancer risks are increased at low doses ( approximately 10 mGy). Discussed here are the issues related to extrapolating radiation risks from low radiation doses to very low doses (<or=1 mGy) - for which purpose we are forced to r...