Currently, the selection of the patients for proton therapy is based on the assumed better physical conformity of the proton plans in comparison to photons. Proton treatments are therefore mostly intended for paediatric patients and CNS cancer patients. There is lack of standards for patient selection for proton treatments and, in addition, there are no established criteria for comparison between proton and photon treatment plans. In addition, the dose fractionation schemes used for protons are not optimised; they are simply chosen to mimic the dose fractionation schemes for photons under the assumption of a relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of 1.1 for protons. The specific aim of this project is to create the framework and perform in silico clinical trials protons versus photons that would provide objective criteria to select patients for proton therapy including the analysis of the robustness of the photon and proton plans to uncertainties in the physical and biological parameters, the optimisation of the proton plans with respect to LET and the optimisation of the plans with respect to the adverse radiobiological features.
This project is performed in close collaboration with RaySearch Laboratories AB (Stockholm, Sweden) and the Skandion Clinic, the national proton therapy facility in Uppsala.
The work extends to considering other ions than protons in close collaboration with one of the main clinical facilities providing C-ion radiation therapy – the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) in Chiba, Japan.
For more information contact Iuliana Toma-Dasu.