Treatment planning and verification tools for adaptive radiation therapy

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Radiation therapy seeks to destroy cancerous cells by delivering a lethal dose of ionizing radiation to the tumour while minimizing the irradiation of surrounding healthy tissue. A typical radiation treatment regimen is delivered over a period of weeks in a series of daily treatment fractions. One important area in which current radiation therapy techniques are not optimal is that they do not account for the changes in anatomy during therapy. Specifically, internal anatomy will move and deform during treatment delivery due to physiological processes such as respiration and digestion. Tumours shrink and the configuration of the surrounding tissue can change from one treatment fraction to the next. Treatment plans which do not account for these changes may not achieve an optimum balance between tumour control and sparing healthy tissue.