Evaluation of plan quality, safety, and toxicity of brachytherapy for locally advanced cervical cancer in an Australian setting following changes in prescription and applicator design.

Introduction: Chemoradiotherapy with MRI-guided brachytherapy boosts is the standard of care for locally advanced cervical cancer. Data from the RetroEMBRACE and EMBRACE I trials provide dose-response curves for target volumes and OAR. This study evaluated plan quality, safety and toxicity following escalation of the CTV_HR D90 prescription from 80-90 Gy to 85-95 Gy for two different applicator designs.

The first clinical implementation of real-time 6 degree-of-freedom image-guided radiotherapy for liver SABR patients.

Purpose: Multiple survey results have identified a demand for improved motion management for liver cancer IGRT. Until now, real-time IGRT for liver has been the domain of dedicated and expensive cancer radiotherapy systems. The purpose of this study was to clinically implement and characterise the performance of a novel real-time 6 degree-of-freedom (DoF) IGRT system, Kilovoltage Intrafraction Monitoring (KIM) for liver SABR patients.

Improving plan quality in cervical brachytherapy using a simple knowledge-based prediction tool for OAR dose (D2cm).

Purpose: Toxicity from cervical brachytherapy has been demonstrated to correlate with the D2cm of the bladder, rectum, and bowel. This suggests a simplified version of knowledge-based planning investigating the relationship of the overlap distance for 2cm and the D2cm from planning may be possible. This work demonstrates the feasibility of simple knowledge-based planning to predict the D2cm, detect suboptimal plans, and improve plan quality.

A predictive model for determining rectum and bladder dose constraints in prostate volumetric modulated arc therapy.

Generic dose-volume constraints of the rectum/bladder (R/B) are used in inverse planning to reduce doses to these organs for patients undergoing prostate radiotherapy. A retrospective study was undertaken to assess correlations between the overlap of the R/B with the planning target volume (PTV) and the dose received during planning to organs at risk (OARs). Data for 105 prostate cancer patients who had volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) to the intact prostate and proximal seminal vesicles at Nepean Cancer Care Centre from 2011 to 2015 were analyzed.

Bright-field scanning confocal electron microscopy using a double aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope.

Scanning confocal electron microscopy (SCEM) offers a mechanism for three-dimensional imaging of materials, which makes use of the reduced depth of field in an aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope. The simplest configuration of SCEM is the bright-field mode. In this paper we present experimental data and simulations showing the form of bright-field SCEM images.