Background/aim: In advanced stage lung cancer, bulky tumors can cause serious symptoms such as malignant airway obstruction (MAO). Prompt response to airway obstruction might be essential to improve quality of life and prolong life expectancy. Palliative external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) is a less invasive and highly safe treatment method that can alleviate symptoms and at the same time treat lung cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground/aim: The most severe adverse event of radiotherapy in lung cancer is radiation pneumonitis (RP). Some indices commonly used to prevent RP are evaluated based on the anatomical lung volume. The irradiation dose may be more accurately assessed by using functional lung volume.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing virtual reality (VR) technology such as head-mounted displays, users can be immersed in a virtual world and perceive it as reality. In radiation therapy departments, pretreatment patients and students rarely observe treatment rooms and treatment devices, making it difficult to understand the overall flow of radiation therapy. In this study, to facilitate the understanding and teaching of radiation therapy, we suggest the implementation of VR technology and develop software compatible with VR to enable a pertinent comprehension of radiation therapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Since most radiation treatment plans are based on computed tomography (CT) images, which makes it difficult to define the targeted tumor volume located near a metal implant, this study aims to evaluate and compare three treatment plans in order to optimally reduce geometrical uncertainty in external radiation treatment of localized prostate cancer.
Methods: Experimental subjects were three prostate patients with bilateral hip prosthesis who had undergone radical radiotherapy. The treatment plans were five-field three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3D-CRT), fixed 5-field intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) using similar gantry angles, and single-arc volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT).