Medical Physics Seminar – Monday, February 3, 2014
On Radiotherapy & Oxygen Dynamics
Michael Kissick, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Dept of Medical Physics, UW-School of Medicine & Public Health, Madison, WI - USA -
Treatments for cancer were some of the first uses of radiation, and very early in this history of radiation therapy, oxygen during the treatment was recognized as a key factor. The future will likely consist of shorter treatments with more modulation and higher doses per fraction, and such a trend can only enhance the sensitivity to oxygen. The future will likely also involve more flexible dose schedules and more flexible dose distributions that are adapted to each patient as the treatment proceeds, and the delivery physics is now well-developed for this. This talk will describe our efforts at the development of a spectral-fitting fiber-optic device and technique that could allow for an inexpensive real-time measure of hemoglobin saturation without the spatial specificity issues suffered by other interstitial oxygen sensing probes. This work is tightly coupled to the basic science issue of how prompt changes in oxygen dynamics from high doses of radiation can ping the free radical, HIF-1, and hypoxia complex interplay. Understanding this interplay is essential for real adaptive radiotherapy.