Contemporary IMRT: Developing Physics and Clinical Implementation
Features
Summary
The most important radiotherapy modality used today, intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), is the most technologically advanced radiotherapy cancer treatment available, rapidly replacing conformal and three-dimensional techniques. Because of these changes, oncologists and radiotherapists need up-to-date information gathered by physicists and engineers. Focusing on new developments and the preliminary clinical implementation, Contemporary IMRT: Developing Physics and Clinical Implementation discusses the relationship between these advances and applications.
Capturing contemporary technological advances, the book reviews modern applications of IMRT and shows how IMRT is used now and how it will be used in the future. The book begins with a historical background of IMRT as well as a discussion of the current state of IMRT. It also covers technical solutions that have been commercialized, such as the sliding window technique, step-and-shoot, tomotherapy, and the Cyberknife. The final chapter explores imaging developments and new planning methods, including gradient-descent and split modulation.
Covering recent advancements in IMRT and showing how these techniques and devices have been implemented, Contemporary IMRT: Developing Physics and Clinical Implementation provides state-of-the-art findings for oncologists, radiotherapists, radiographers, physicists, and engineers.
Table of Contents
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTENSITY-MODULATED RADIATION THERAPY (IMRT): GNERAL STATEMENTS AND POINTS OF DEBATE
Observations on IMRT at the current time
Criticism of the philosophy of IMRT
DEVELOPMENTS IN ROTATION IMRT AND TOMOTHERAPY
NOMOS MIMiC tomotherapy
University of Wisconsin machine for tomotherapy
Tomotherapy using a 60Co source
Tomotherapy with an MLC
Summary
DEVELOPMENTS IN IMRT USING A MULTILEAF COLLIMATOR (MLC)
New sequencers/interpreters
Radiation leakage and accounting for machine effects in IMRT delivery
Dose calculation for IMRT
Features of MLC delivery of IMRT
Dynamic arc therapy
Combining step-and-shoot and dynamic delivery for dMLC
IMAT-technical issues
New ideas related to the dMLC technique
Compensators and comparisons of compensator and MLC-based IMRT
Optimum width of leaves for an MLC
MicroMLCs for IMRT
Increasing the spatial resolution of a conventional MLC
Verification of MLC-delivered IMRT
Quality assurance (QA) of MLC delivery
Summary
DEVELOPMENTS IN IMRT NOT USING AN MLC
The Cyberknife
The design of the shuttling MLC (SMLC)
IMRT with the "jaws-plus-mask" technique
The variable aperture collimator (VAC)
One-dimensional IMRT
Summary
CLINICAL IMRT- EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE?
IMRT of the prostate showing measurable clinical benefit
Comparison of treatment techniques for the prostate
Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust pelvic and other IMRT
Comparison of IMRT with conformal radiotherapy (CFRT) for complex shaped tumors
IMRT for whole-pelvic and gynecological radiotherapy
Head-and-neck IMRT
Breast IMRT
Bladder IMRT at the Christie Hospital
Lung cancer IMRT
Scalp IMRT
Other clinical IMRT reports-various tumor sites
Summary
3D PLANNING FOR CFRT AND IMRT: DEVELOPMENTS IN IMAGING FOR PLANNING AND FOR ASSISTING THERAPY
Challenges to IMRT and inverse planning
Determination of the GTV, CTV, and PTV: the influence of 3D medical imaging
New inverse-planning methods for IMRT
New forward-planning methods for IMRT: direct aperture optimization
Smoothing IMBs
Incorporating MLC equipment constraints in inverse planning
Beam direction optimization
Monte Carlo dose calculation
Energy in IMRT
Measuring and accounting for patient/tumor movement
Megavoltage CT (MVCT) and kilovoltage CT (kVCT) for position verification
MRI and IMRT simultaneously
IMRT using mixed photons and electrons
EPILOGUE
REFERENCES
INDEX
Editorial Reviews
"… the author presents a remarkably exhaustive review of the published material on the physics and clinical implementation of IMRT since the summer of 2000 through June 2004. This is also the author's most recent volume in a series of four on radiation therapy, and his second book devoted exclusively to developments in IMRT. …Overall, this book reviews a vast amount of valuable published material to give the reader an exhaustive and accurate account of developments in the physics and clinical implementation of IMRT over the last four years. It is an excellent review that will serve as a valuable reference for the practicing physicist."
- Medical Physics
"Contemporary IMRT covers the latest developments in the field of intensity modulated radiation therapy between 2000 and 2004, and is a wonderful and exhaustive book with almost 1,500 references, mostly published in this period. The wealth of newly published work makes a review book like this invaluable for anybody who wants to understand and contribute to the exciting world of contemporary radiation therapy…Especially valuable is an extensive review of early clinical IMRT evidence, primarily expressed as reduced toxicity due to more efficient critical organ sparing."
- Physics in Medicine and Biology
