A TCP model for external beam treatment of intermediate-risk prostate cancer.

Purpose: Biological models offer the ability to predict clinical outcomes. The authors describe a model to predict the clinical response of intermediate-risk prostate cancer to external beam radiotherapy for a variety of fractionation regimes.

Methods: A fully heterogeneous population averaged tumor control probability model was fit to clinical outcome data for hyper, standard, and hypofractionated treatments.

Core curriculum for medical physicists in radiology. Recommendations from an EFOMP/ESR working group.

Some years ago it was decided that a European curriculum should be developed for medical physicists professionally engaged in the support of clinical diagnostic imaging departments. With this in mind, EFOMP (European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics) in association with ESR (European Society of Radiology) nominated an expert working group. This curriculum is now to hand.

Functional safety of health information technology.

In an effort to improve patient safety and reduce adverse events, there has been a rapid growth in the utilisation of health information technology (HIT). However, little work has examined the safety of the HIT systems themselves, the methods used in their development or the potential errors they may introduce into existing systems. This article introduces the conventional safety-related systems development standard IEC 61508 to the medical domain.

Patient dosimetry and a novel approach to establishing Diagnostic Reference Levels in dental radiology.

Diagnostic Reference Levels provide a method of ensuring that patient doses in medical procedures are kept at acceptable levels. Their application in dentistry can provide an indication of current dose levels and can assist in potentially significant dose reduction in Ireland given the number of patients screened annually. This study involved retrospective analyses of entrance surface dose and dose-width-product measurements obtained in Irish Dental Practices for both Intra-Oral and Panoramic units respectively, followed by comparisons with Monte-Carlo generated computer models of these procedures.

Electron beam therapy at extended source-to-surface distance: a Monte Carlo investigation.

Electron-beam therapy is used to treat superficial tumors at a standard 100 cm source-to-surface distance (SSD). However, certain clinical situations require the use of an extended SSD. In the present study, Monte Carlo methods were used to investigate clinical electron beams, at standard and non-standard SSDs, from a Siemens Oncor Avant Garde (Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany) linear accelerator (LINAC).

Determination of the modulation transfer function for a time-gated fluorescence imaging system.

The use of fluorescence for cancer detection is currently under investigation. Presently, steady-state fluorescence detection methods are in use, but have limitations due to poor contrast between the fluorescence of the tumor and background autofluorescence. Improved contrast can be obtained with time-resolved techniques because of the differing lifetimes between autofluorescence and exogenous photosensitizers that selectively accumulate within tumor tissue.

The use of chloroaluminium phthalocyanine tetrasulfonate (AlPcTS) for time-delayed fluorescence imaging.

Phthalocyanine derivatives are currently under investigation for use in photodynamic therapy, which is a promising cancer treatment. These materials, which display preferential uptake in cancerous cells, also exhibit high fluorescence yields and can be used for tumour detection. Problems with steady-state fluorescence techniques such as excitation scatter and background autofluorescence can be eliminated by using time-resolved imaging techniques without the need for filters.