Biology-guided radiation therapy

 

Sophisticated treatment techniques, such as Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy or Proton Therapy, have provided the means to deliver highly conformal treatments, offering the ability to better spare healthy tissue and escalate tumor dose. To fully take advantage of the potentials of these techniques in optimizing treatment outcome, there is an increasing need to integrate anatomical and functional/biological images at the planning stage, in order to determine where the dose should be deposited. Today, tumor treatment planning is usually based on anatomical images through Computed Tomography and/or Magnetic Resonance Imaging, i.e. mostly accounting for the geometry of the tumor. However, in most cancers, tumors are heterogeneous, exhibiting intra-tumor regions of radioresistance. In 2000, it was proposed to use molecular imaging to achieve "biological conformation" by escalating the dose to parts of the tumor that are particularly aggressive or radiation resistant. Dose escalation to these intra-tumor subvolumes, or "dose painting", might result in better local control while toxicity would not be enhanced. This sub-project of PIM will focus on developing a unified methodology to integrate multimodal MRI and PET data to improve treatment planning and to evaluate the benefits for patients suffering from gliomas (HUGR cohort) or from skull-base tumors (IC-CPO cohort).

 

 

Partners:

 

 

 

 

 

Project Leader: Eric Deutsch (Inserm U1030)

 

• Brain tumor treated by radiotherapy (Charlotte Robert - Inserm U1030

• Skull-base tumors treated by protontherapy (Hamid Mammar - IC-CPO)