Radiation therapy (radiotherapy) is an essential part of cancer treatment and is used in the treatment of 40 per cent of all patients who are cured of their disease. All radiotherapy treatments work by the application of ionising radiation to malignant cells in tumours. The free radicals released by this process damage the DNA of the exposed tissue, killing off the cancerous cells. By targeting the radiation to the tumour, the damage to surrounding healthy tissue is minimised.
Modern radiotherapy machines can now deliver highly targeted radiotherapy treatment. However, the use of high precision radiotherapy techniques is extremely demanding in terms of hours spent, from the physician who defines the tumour target and healthy tissues, to the physicist who has to calculate a plan of optimum beam angles and trajectories for the treatment, and the radiographer, who must ensure that the treatment is delivered accurately to the target every day during a six or seven week course of radiotherapy.
Accel-RT is an innovative partnership between oncologists, physicists and computer scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Over the next three years the collaborators will develop software tools and processes that will speed up the process of planning of radiotherapy.
Image: Image-guided intensity modulated RT plan for a patient with a spinal tumour. The radiation dose is shaped away from the kidneys (yellow outlines) and the spinal nerve roots (inside the green outline). The colour wash represents radiation dose Credit: Andy Parker
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge