The following are descriptions of several radiosurgery research projects that our medical physicists are currently pursuing:
Treatment Planning Strategies for Stereotactic Radiosurgery (Labby)
For intracranial radiosurgery treatments, we seek conformal high-dose radiation dose distributions with exceptionally sharp fall-off of the dose outside the treatment volume. Depending on the exact size, shape and location of the target volume, we have access to different treatment planning approaches to achieve these goals. We could treat the target with multiple “shots” of radiation built up from spherical doses with circular conical collimators, or we could treat the target with customized multi-leaf collimator sequences. Sometimes we wish to center the radiation beams exactly in the center of one target, and sometimes we wish to treat multiple targets all with the same localization. We’re working to quantify the exact trade-offs between various treatment planning strategies to better decide the optimal strategy for every unique patient.
