Recent Press Releases
Breakthrough in radiotherapy promises targeted cancer treatment
Institute of Physics Press Release
Tue, 19 May 2009
Current radiation therapy treatment damages a patient’s healthy tissue as well as eradicating the tumour it is intended to destroy, making the treatment especially invasive and often causing nasty side effects.
A new development in radiotherapy will enable a far more precise and accurate treatment for cancerous tumours by using real-time images to guide the radiation beam.
Real-time image-guided radiotherapy, combining radiation treatment with non-invasive MR imaging, would be far less harmful for patients as it would leave less healthy tissue damaged and give radiation oncologists the possibility of instantly modifying the treatment dose as tumours change in size and shift.
Published in issue 12 of IOP Publishing’s Physics in Medicine & Biology the findings of a research group from the University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands are set to “open the door to start testing MRI-guided radiation therapy in the clinic”.
The team of researchers has successfully proven that simultaneous radiation treatment and diagnostic-quality MRI is feasible. By actively shielding the radiation beam from the MRI scanner’s magnet and redesigning the treatment room set-up, which has until now been difficult to put into practice, the researchers have managed to produce high-quality, real-time MRI images, which could enable oncologists to target radiation far more accurately while it is being applied.
Working towards a clinical prototype, the research team is hoping to start the first clinical tests in a year’s time.
Notes to editors:
Contact
1. For further information, a full draft of the journal paper or contact with one of the authors, contact IOP Press Officer, Joe Winters:
Tel: 020 7470 4815
Mobile: 07946 321473
E-mail: joseph.winters@iop.org
Integrating a 1.5 T MRI scanner with a 6 MV accelerator: proof of concept
2. The published version of the paper "Integrating a 1.5 T MRI scanner with a 6 MV accelerator: proof of concept" (Raaymakers B W et al Phys. Med. Biol. vol 54 (no 12) N229) will be freely available online from Tuesday, 19 May. It will be available at http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0031-9155/54/12/N01
Physics in Medicine and Biology
3. Physics in Medicine and Biology is published by IOP Publishing on behalf of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. It is also an official journal of the following medical societies: the Canadian Organization of Medical Physics, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Physik, the Japanese Association of Radiological Physics, the European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics and the International Organization for Medical Physics.
The Institute of Physics
4. The Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics. It has a worldwide membership of more than 36 000 and is a leading communicator of physics-related science to all audiences, from specialists through to government and the general public. Its publishing company, IOP Publishing, is a world leader in scientific publishing and the electronic dissemination of physics. Go to http://www.iop.org/.
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