A technique for transperineal high-dose-rate (HDR) prostate brachytherapy and needle biopsy in a standard 1.5 T MRI scanner is demonstrated. In each of eight procedures (in four patients with intermediate to high risk localized prostate cancer), four MRI-guided transperineal prostate biopsies were obtained followed by placement of 14-15 hollow transperineal catheters for HDR brachytherapy. Mean...

Brachytherapy applications are not restricted to one method only; any method could be combined with another, as well as other radiotherapy techniques. In cervical cancer, intracavitary brachytherapy (ICBT) has been used for practical reasons. Lately though, combination of ICBT and and interstitial brachytherapy (ISBT) techniques are being evaluated in deference to feasibility, practicality and ...

Brachytherapy is a form of radiation therapy commonly used in the treatment of prostate cancer wherein sustained radiation doses can be precisely targeted to the tumor area by the implantation of small radioactive seeds around the treatment area. Ultrasound is a popular imaging mode for seed implantation, but the seeds are difficult to distinguish from the tissue structure. In this work, we dem...

The Lecture covers the author's personal experience in brachytherapy in radiation oncology, beginning with low-dose rate (LDR) treatments using 226Ra "hot" sources, in the 1960s and early 1970s, through manual afterloading for treating gynaecological cancers with the same sources in the 1970s and 1980s, to high-dose rate (HDR) remote afterloading on a microSelectron HDR machine, from 1989 on. T...

To the Editor, In the last decade, the number of low-energy photonemitting brachytherapy source manufacturers has dramatically grown, and there are now about 15 manufacturers for I and Pd encapsulated sources for permanent and temporary brachytherapy. More recently, several third party calibration services, some based in commercial radiopharmacies, have begun marketing “independent assays” of b...

Lip cancer is one of the most prevalent skin tumours of the head and neck. The characteristics of the tumour relate to their exophyitic growth in an area of easy visual acces which allows their diagnosis in early stages. As a result, there is a better prognosis with the present treatments. In early stages the treatment can be performed by surgery or by brachytherapy, and the results are similar...

The aim of our study was to develop an algorithm to simulate the digitally reconstructed radiograph (DRR) calculation process for different beam qualities (photon energies) in the range 50 keV to 12 MeV. This was achieved using volumetric anatomical data for the patient obtained from three-dimensional diagnostic CT images. These DRR images can be used in three-dimensional treatment planning for...

Dramatic advances have been made in brachytherapy for cervical cancer. Radiation treatment planning has evolved from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, incorporating magnetic resonance imaging and/or computed tomography into the treatment paradigm. This allows for better delineation and coverage of the tumor, as well as improved avoidance of surrounding organs. Consequently, advanced brachyt...

Breast brachytherapy has been in use for most of the 20th century. In the 1920s, Keynes used interstitial radium needles to implant the entire breast, and frequently, the peripheral lymph nodes, to treat cancer of the breast.[1] With the advent of megavoltage radiation, external-beam radiation therapy (EBRT) was used to treat the whole breast, with brachytherapy being utilized as a boost for un...

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