Advanced micro-PET/CT/RT System for Translational Radiation Oncology Applications

 描述（由申请人提供）：对于放射治疗（RT），精确定义和输送具有靶向分布和剂量水平的辐射以及根据肿瘤对RT的生物学反应调整治疗计划的能力是任何成功的临床治疗和转化研究的关键。为了改进现有的RT方案和开发新的RT策略，关键是用类似于临床RT实践中应用的技术和程序进行翻译RT研究，使研究方法和结果与临床相关，并能有效地转化为临床研究和应用。本项目的目标是建立实用和先进的PET/CT图像引导放射治疗（IGRT）的能力，为平移RT研究。该项目的意义和影响是显而易见的：它将克服一个关键的技术障碍，将目前几乎完全依赖解剖CT图像的RT研究实践转变为以功能图像为指导，了解实际肿瘤生物学状态和功能的RT研究实践。该项目的成功预计将对改善和加速翻译RT研究产生持久影响，并对增强癌症治疗产生深远影响。该研究旨在开发一种先进的动物PET，并将其与现有的micro-CT/RT集成，通过体模成像和系统建模实验评估和改进性能，并进行试点动物研究，以测试PET/CT图像引导平移放射肿瘤学应用的能力。新开发的PET探测器技术将用于克服技术挑战，以实现RT研究中小尺寸肿瘤定量成像所需的高灵敏度（23%）和高均匀分辨率（1 mm）。该项目开发的新型成像技术也应该是实用的，以便可以在没有根本技术困难的情况下应用于其他微型CT/RT系统。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): For radiation therapy (RT), the capability to precisely define and delivery radiations with the targeted distribution and dose level and to adapt the treatment plan based on the tumor biological response to RT is the key for any successful clinical therapy and translational research. For improving the current RT protocols and develop new novel RT strategies, it is critical to conduct translational RT researches with the technologies and procedures analogous to those applied in clinical RT practice so that the research methods and results are clinically relevant and can be effectively translated to clinical studies and applications. The goal of this project is to establish practical and advanced PET/CT image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) capability for translational RT researches. The significance and impact of this project are very clear: it will overcome a critical technical obstale to transform the current practice of RT research that is almost solely relied on anatomic CT images to the one guided by functional images with the knowledge of actual tumor biological status and function. The success of this project is expected to have lasting impact to improving and accelerating the translational RT research and profound benefits to enhancing the cancer treatment. The research aims to develop an advanced animal PET and integrate it with an existing micro-CT/RT, evaluate and improve the performance through experiments of phantom imaging and system modeling, and conduct pilot animal studies to test the capability PET/CT image-guided translational radiation oncology applications. The newly developed PET detector technologies will be applied to overcome technical challenges to achieve high sensitivity (23%) and high, uniform resolution (1 mm) required by the quantitative imaging of small size tumor for RT studies. The novel imaging technology to be developed by this project should also be practical so that it can be adopted for other micro-CT/RT systems without fundamental technical difficulties.