title: Locating and targeting moving tumors with radiation beams.
abstract: The current climate of rapid technological evolution is reflected in newer and better methods to modulate and direct radiation beams for cancer therapy. This Vision 20/20 paper focuses on part of this evolution, locating and targeting moving tumors. The two processes are somewhat independent and in principle different implementations of the locating and targeting processes can be interchanged. Advanced localization and targeting methods have an impact on treatment planning and also present new challenges for quality assurance (QA), that of verifying real-time delivery. Some methods to locate and target moving tumors with radiation beams are currently FDA approved for clinical use-and this availability and implementation will increase with time. Extensions of current capabilities will be the integration of higher order dimensionality, such as rotation and deformation in addition to translation, into the estimate of the patient pose and real-time reoptimization and adaption of delivery to the dynamically changing anatomy of cancer patients.
authors.affiliation: Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Sonja
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dieterich
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cleary
authors.forename: Warren
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: D'Souza
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.forename: Kenneth H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Keall
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology* / Q000532:radiotherapy*; D009038:Motion; D010315:Particle Accelerators; D011786:Quality Control; D018787:Radiation Oncology / Q000379:methods; D011878:Radiotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D011880:Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D011881:Radiotherapy, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012119:Respiration; D013997:Time Factors