Improving Effectiveness and Accuracy of Radiation Therapy

描述(由申请人提供)：导言：放射治疗的有效性可以通过提高放射治疗计算的准确性来提高。拟议的研究将集中在两种类型的癌症上，前列腺癌和肺癌。提出的前列腺癌研究是早期工作的延伸，而肺癌研究是一个新的感兴趣的领域。背景：前列腺癌的治疗在大多数情况下都是成功的。尽管每8名男性中就有1人会被诊断出患有前列腺癌，但34人中只有1人会死于前列腺癌(美国癌症协会)。在特定目标1和2中提出的研究集中于通过增加对前列腺癌调强放射治疗(IMRT)的剂量分布和副作用的了解来减少不良辐射副作用。该项目的目标是为放射肿瘤学家提供必要的信息，以便为个别患者选择最合适的束流能量。肺癌是美国癌症死亡的主要原因，大约每10名肺癌患者中就有6人在确诊后1年内死亡(美国癌症协会)。提高肺癌的治疗效果势在必行。具体目标3和4侧重于提高肺癌放射治疗中剂量计算的准确性，长期目标是了解需要多少辐射剂量才能提高治愈率。 假设：提高放疗剂量计算的准确性可以减少前列腺癌放射治疗的不良反应，并可以增加肺癌放射治疗的治疗收益。具体目标：将致力于以下研究目标：(1)进行皮肤剂量测量，以评估接受6 MV射线能量调强放射治疗的前列腺癌患者的皮肤反应；(2)执行体模蒙特卡罗计算(以体模形式)，计算调强放疗对周围器官的剂量，可扩展至患者个人计算；(3)提供三年的保护时间，以帮助她过渡到知名癌症研究人员。她的研究计划是基于她之前在改进调强放射治疗(IMRT)剂量效应量化方面的工作。先前提交的材料主要被批评为缺乏全面的培训活动和研究方法的简明扼要，包括缺乏统计分析、方法和理由。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Introduction: Effectiveness of radiation therapy can be improved through increased accuracy in radiotherapy calculations. The proposed research will focus on two types of cancer, prostate and lung. The proposed prostate cancer research is an extension of earlier work while the lung cancer research is a new area of interest. Background: Treatment for prostate cancer is successful in most cases. Although 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, only 1 in 34 will die from prostate cancer (American Cancer Society). Research proposed in Specific Aims 1 and 2 focuses on decreasing adverse radiation side-effects by increasing the understanding of dose distributions and side effects from Intensity Modulated Radiation therapy (IMRT) for prostate cancer. The goal of this project is to provide Radiation Oncologists the necessary information to select the most appropriate beam energy for individual patients. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, approximately 6 out of 10 people with lung cancer die within 1 year of being diagnosed (American Cancer Society). Improving the therapeutic gains in lung cancer is imperative. Specific Aims 3 and 4 focus on improving the accuracy of dose calculations in lung cancer radiation therapy with the long term goal of understanding how much radiation dose is necessary to increase cure rates. Hypothesis: Increased accuracy in radiotherapy dose calculations can reduce adverse side effects from prostate cancer radiotherapy and can increase the therapeutic gain for lung cancer radiotherapy. Specific Aims: The following research aims will be addressed: (1) Perform skin dose measurements to evaluate skin reactions for prostate cancer patients treated with 6MV beam energy for IMRT; (2) Perform Monte Carlo calculations (in phantom) of dose to peripheral organs from IMRT, expandable to individual patient calculations; three years of protected time to facilitate her transition to an established cancer researcher. Her research plan is based on her previous work in improving the quantification of dosage effects for intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). The previous submission was primarily critiqued for lack of a full breadth of training activities and for brevity of research methods including a lack of statistical analyses methods and justification.