Synchronising patient and beam movement boosts radiation dose to tumours

Sophisticated computer modelling could be used to slowly move the table - known as a couch - and a radiation source in three dimensions to direct radiation precisely to the patient’s tumour, researchers have suggested.

Currently, a radiotherapy table can be angled during treatment, but there is no way to synchronise its rotation with a moving radiation beam. However, with some modifications, an upgraded system could move both the patient and the beam while reducing the radiation dose of healthy tissue.

A team at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust modelled the effectiveness of the technique using data from four patients with different cancers close to major organs and found it could substantially cut the amount of radiation delivered to healthy tissue.

The study, published in Physics in Medicine and Biology, was funded by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), with additional support from Cancer Research UK.