MRI-guided Adaptive Radiation Therapy

Adaptive Radiation Therapy (ART) is a state-of-the-art approach that uses a feedback process to account for patient-specific anatomic and/or biological changes, thus, delivering highly individualized radiation therapy for cancer patients. Basic components of ART include: (1) detection of anatomic and biological changes, often facilitated by multi-modality images, (2) treatment plan optimization to account for the patient-specific spatial morphological and biological changes with consideration of radiation responses, and (3) technologies to precisely deliver the optimized plan to the patient. Interventions of ART may consist of both on-line and off-line approaches. Accumulated clinical data have demonstrated the need for ART in clinical settings, assisted by the wide application of intensity modulated RT (IMRT) and image-guided RT (IGRT). The technology and methodology for ART have advanced significantly in the last few years, particularly due to the recent clinical introduction of MR-Linac. MRI offers superior soft tissue contrast and a wide array of physiological information and has been considered the choice image modality for ART. We are using Elekta Unity to deliver ART for patients with a variety of tumors, including pancreas, liver, prostate, head and neck, and brain. Our program was the first worldwide to use 4D-MRL in an online MRgRT workflow.

Elekta Unity - MR/RT Radiotherapy