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Cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy treatment may soon benefit from reduced doses of radiation, a new research project under way in Brisbane.

The Australian first study is looking at lessening the amount of radiation that patients receive to the lowest effective level.

Senior Medical Physicist John Kenny from Premion, a leading radiation oncology provider, has been awarded funding for the study through the Wesley Research Institute (WRI).

“With advances in radiotherapy imaging, used during the treatment process, the amount of radiation patients receive has increased over the years by very small amounts. We would prefer to keep this to a minimum,” Mr Kenny said.

“New image guided radiation therapy (IGRT) has brought great benefits, allowing for greater accuracy in treating the disease, particularly for prostate and brain cancer patients, as well as sparing healthy tissue.”

However this means patients are now exposed to a small increase in the overall quantity of radiation from their treatment, than would have been the case five years ago.

“Each image taken is equivalent to the radiation dose of an x-ray, which is very small compared to the doses used to treat the cancer,” Mr Kenny said.

This is the first extensive clinical study of this sophisticated technique to examine how much radiation patients receive during their overall treatment.

Premion follows the ALARA principle with respect to image guided radiation treatment which is to maintain the imaging dose as low as reasonably achievable.

“We want to investigate how we can reduce the radiation doses to the lowest possible amount that we need in order to obtain a good result,” Mr Kenny said.

“The project will provide some tools and some guidelines to assist with the minimization of exposures and how we commission and monitor the performance of these systems.”

WRI's Director Professor Julie Campbell said that WRI and researchers from Premion have been investigating improvements in imaging and radiotherapy for over a decade. The ability to reduce the imaging dose burden while remaining confident of the accuracy of the image guidance procedure will directly benefit patients and make a lasting difference to current health care practices.

Source: The Wesley Research Institute

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