Medical Physics Seminar - Monday, May 12, 2008

QUICK LINKS: [Medical Physics Home Page] [Seminar Home Page]

Radiation Therapy of Moving & Deforming Patients

Katja M. Langen, Ph.D.

M.D. Anderson Cancer Center-Orlando

Orlando, Florida

The patient anatomy that is used for treatment planning purposes is not necessarily identical to the patient’s anatomy during treatment. Organs move in between treatment fractions and during the treatment itself. Patients are non-rigid bodies and deform randomly or systematically. An understanding of the dosimetric impact of motion and deformation is desired but challenging.

Repeat in-room imaging such as tomotherapy’s megavoltage CT imaging can be used to gain an understanding of the impact of patient deformation. However, an assessment of the impact on the cumulative dose distribution requires deformable image registration techniques. To quantify the dosimetric impact of target motion during radiation delivery requires real time motion data and a technique to synchronize the dose calculation with this data.

In this presentation current research efforts at MD Anderson Orlando to assess the dosimetric uncertainties due to motion and deformation will be discussed.

Location: 1335 Health Sciences Learning Center (HSLC)

Time:  4:00pm-5:00pm

Refreshments will be provided prior to the talk

QUICK LINKS: [Medical Physics Home Page] [Seminar Home Page]