Seminar

Medical Physics Seminar – Monday, March 18, 2013

Directional High Dose Rate Brachytherapy Source

Athena Heredia (student of Dr. Bruce Thomadsen)
Research Assistant, Department of Medical Physics, UW-School of Medicine & Public Health, Madison, WI - USA –

Conventional sources used in brachytherapy provide near-isotropic or radially symmetric dose distributions, with asymmetries due to short comings in the source production. Thus, optimizations of dose distributions have been limited to varied dwell times at specified locations within a given treatment volume, for after-loaded or wire based techniques, or source positioning for seed implantation techniques. In years past, intensity modulated brachytherapy (IMBT) has been used to reduce the amount of radiation to surrounding sensitive structures in some intracavitary cases by adding space or a partial shields.

In this presentation, I will introduce a new directional high dose rate (d-HDR) brachytherapy source. The d-HDR source shields radiation on one side of the source to less than 1% of primary emissions, which would spare neighboring sensitive structures allowing for better treatment conformality and patient outcomes.

Location: 1335 (HSLC) Health Sciences Learning Center, 750 Highland Avenue, Madison, WI

Time: 4:00pm-5:00pm