Pediatric considerations for proton therapy
Introduction Approximately 10,500 cases of childhood cancer are diagnosed each year, which represent about 1% of all new cancers in the United States. Nearly 45% of these cancers will either…
Technological advancements and outlook in proton therapy
Introduction Intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT) using pencil beam scanning (PBS) technology has revolutionized the practice of particle therapy in recent years. , In PBS delivery, a particle pencil beam is…
Proton therapy for gynecologic malignancies
Introduction Each year more than 90,000 women are diagnosed with a gynecologic (ovarian, vulvar, vaginal, cervical, uterine, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal) cancer in the United States. Radiotherapy is often…
Proton therapy for prostate cancer
Introduction The use of proton therapy for the treatment of cancer was first proposed by Robert Wilson in 1946. A beam of protons gives most of its dose at a…
Physics quality assurance
Introduction This chapter describes the physics quality assurance (QA) program for the proton pencil beam scanning (PBS) gantry of the Hitachi ProBeat machine (Hitachi America, Ltd., Tarrytown, NY) at the…
Principles of intensity-modulated proton therapy treatment planning
Intensity-modulated proton therapy is effective for complex targets Proton beam therapy (PBT), with its characteristic Bragg peak, holds the promise of further reducing toxicity. Several techniques exist for the administration…
Proton radiotherapy for breast cancer
Introduction Numerous planning studies demonstrate superior dosimetry for proton radiotherapy compared with photon-based radiotherapy for breast cancers of all stages, even compared with intensity-modulated radiotherapy. Protons can reduce dose to…
Gastrointestinal
Introduction Proton beam radiation (PBR) has the potential to improve the therapeutic ratio in the treatment of several gastrointestinal malignancies by decreasing the dose to nontarget critical structures. In general,…
Adult central nervous system tumors
Introduction For both primary and metastatic brain tumors, radiation therapy (RT) remains one of the standard treatment modalities. Although RT techniques using photons have greatly improved in recent decades, substantial…
Clinical commissioning of pencil beam scanning for intensity-modulated proton therapy
Introduction In radiation oncology, “clinical commissioning,” or simply “commissioning,” refers to the process that takes place after a machine has passed acceptance tests but before the first patient can be…
