Multifunctional nanoprobes have great potential as effective radiosensitizers and drug carriers. RGD-modified gold nanorods could increase the uptake of nanoparticles via receptor-mediated endocytosis in integrin alphaV beta3-overexpressing breast cancer cells, which could enhance the effects of radiation on tumor cells, leading to further radiosensitization. The purpose of our study was to dem...

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...

Plastic scintillation dosimeters (PSD) have been a topic of a keen research interest for the past 20 years. Numerous PSD systems have been proposed, most times differentiating from the previous by a slight change in one or more components, such as the photodetector. However, a few major technological and engineering innovations have also been made. Over the past few years PSDs have been evaluat...

PURPOSE External beam radiation therapy (EBRT) usually uses heterogeneous dose distributions in a given volume. Designing detectors for quality control of these treatments is still a developing subject. The size of the detectors should be small to enhance spatial resolution and ensure low perturbation of the beam. A high uniformity in angular response is also a very important feature in a detec...

The aim of the TLD pilot study was to investigate and to reduce the uncertainties involved in the measurements of absorbed dose and to improve the consistency in dose determination in the regional radiotherapy centres in Poland. The intercomparison was organized by the SSDL. It covered absorbed dose measurements under reference conditions for Co-60, high energy X-rays and electron beams. LiF po...

In this article, we describe a clinical mega-voltage cone-beam computed tomography (MV CBCT) system, present the image acquisition and patient setup procedure, discuss the positioning accuracy and image quality, and illustrate its potential use for image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) through selected clinical examples. The MV CBCT system consists of a standard linear accelerator equipped with...