by Dr Alejandro Carabre-Fernandez
(UPenn)
Proton radiotherapy is slowly but steadily becoming an established radiotherapy modality. Current challenges include utilization of pencil beam scanning techniques in moving targets and in-vivo verification of the beam range to reduce uncertainty. However, technology is evolving at such fast pace that these challenges are being quickly resolved (eg. IPEM SCOPE, June 16, pg 32). Proton radiotherapy costs is driving new directions of technology development as well as new frontiers of advancement that help justifying such costs with an increase of the therapeutic benefit from this treatment modality. These encompass both: development of new beam delivery techniques as well as better understanding of the biological advantages of proton radiotherapy. This talk will introduce some of these new techniques in combination with their possible radiobiological advantage versus traditional proton beam delivery.