7-11 July 2019
EV44 - PEP 2G: Dosimetry Methods for Second Cancer Risk Estimation Following Radiotherapy (Mille)Lake Sheen A 10:30 - 12:30 |
| Advanced imaging methods combined with modern linear accelerator technologies have made it possible to deliver radiation precisely to the targeted tissue. Nonetheless, even the most careful treatment planning still results in unavoidable dose to nearby normal tissues. The impact of this unintended dose on patient long-term health is of increasing concern as survival rates improve. Radiotherapy is known to be an important contributor to second primary cancers and cardiovascular disease which may occur many years after treatment. Furthermore, the efficacy of emerging treatments such as proton and heavy ion therapies have yet to be evaluated through long-term epidemiological follow-up. Improved knowledge on the relationship between organ dose and late health effects is critical for the optimization of treatments and the development of preventative measures for mitigating toxicity, thereby improving quality of life of future survivors. Consequently, the Radiation Epidemiology Branch (REB) of the National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics has initiated or is participating in a number of epidemiologic studies of radiotherapy patients. Radiation exposure assessment is a critical component of these efforts but poses significant challenge in the context of epidemiological studies which typically involve a large number of patients who were treated many years in the past, for whom anatomical images may be inaccessible, and for whom only limited radiotherapy plan information may be known. To overcome these issues the REB is developing a novel radiotherapy dosimetry system entitled NCIRT which combines computational phantoms, accelerated Monte Carlo simulation, and the NIH High-Performance Computing cluster to provide organ dose estimates. This talk will describe the multi-institutional effort to develop, validate, and ultimately apply the NCIRT method to branch and extramural epidemiologic studies or clinical trials. |
