In radiotherapy practice, one often needs to compare two dose distributions. Especially with the wide clinical implementation of intensity-modulated radiation therapy, software tools for quantitative dose (or fluence) distribution comparison are required for patient-specific quality assurance. Dose distribution comparison is not a trivial task since it has to be performed in both dose and spati...

Background: Radiation Pneumonia (RP) is one of the most extensive side effects in Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) of lung cancer. SBRT are performed by means of Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT), Intensity Modulated Arc Therapy (IMAT), CyberKnife (CK) or Helical Tomotherapy (HT) treatment methods. In this study, we performed a plan study to determine the plan parameter such as the M...

Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) has become an effective tool for cancer treatment with radiation. However, even expert radiation planners still need to spend a substantial amount of time manually adjusting IMRT optimization parameters such as dose limits and costlet weights in order to obtain a clinically acceptable plan. In this paper, we describe two main advances that simplify the pa...

The first purpose of this paper is to shed some new light on the old question of selecting the number of beams in intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The second purpose is to illuminate the related issue of discrete static beam angles versus rotational techniques, which has recently re-surfaced due to the advancement of volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT). A specific objective is ...

Volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) has found widespread clinical application in recent years. A large number of treatment planning studies have evaluated the potential for VMAT for different disease sites based on the currently available commercial implementations of VMAT planning. In contrast, literature on the underlying mathematical optimization methods used in treatment planning is sca...

background: an effective method for management of large and bulky malignant tumors. this treatment modality is also known as specially fractionated radiation therapy (sfrt). in this treatment technique a grid block converted the open radiation field into a series of pencil beams. dosimetric characteristics of an external beam grid radiation field have been investigated using experimental and mo...

It’s the time of the year when an annual editorial is due. Thinking about possible topics, I noticed the extraordinary amount of media advertising going on directed to the public concerning new medical tools. Today radio and television ads directly discuss prescription medications and their potential benefits (never the down side) and finish with the comment, “Ask your doctor.” Obviously, vendo...

OBJECTIVE Mimicking state-of-the-art patient radiotherapy with high-precision irradiators for small animals is expected to advance the understanding of dose-effect relationships and radiobiology in general. We work on the implementation of intensity-modulated radiotherapy-like irradiation schemes for small animals. As a first step, we present a fast analytical dose calculation algorithm for keV...

External beam radiotherapy (EBRT) for the treatment of loco-regional prostate cancer yields similar survival rates to radical prostatectomy (10-year survival: 90-95%, 60-70% and 50-60% in T1, T2 and T3-stages, respectively). Post-operative radiotherapy in high-risk prostate cancer may improve the local and distant disease-free survival of patients. Using the recently developed technology of the...

Brachytherapy plays an important role in the definitive treatment of cervical cancers by radiotherapy. In the present study, we investigated whether sliding-window intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) can achieve a pear-shaped distribution with a similar sharp dose falloff identical to that of brachytherapy. The computed tomography scans of a tandem and ovoid patient were pushed to both...