Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
9 Remote Computational Tools for Radiotherapy
Cancer Treatment Planning
Andrés Gómez on behalf of the members of the Business Experiment
9.1 Introduction - The Need for and Potential of Grid Computing for
Radiotherapy Cancer Treatment Planning
The health sector is an important user of information technologies, both for the
management and administration of the hospitals and other services as well as for the
clinical usage. For example, currently, there is an important activity to install Patient
Record Information Systems, including the interchange of this information among
hospitals. For several years now, these information systems have included the image
and other data for diagnosis in electronic form. Additionally, there are other infor-
mation technologies solutions to help doctors and technicians in the diagnostic and
treatment of serious illness. One of these clinical tools is the system to calculate the
radiotherapy treatments for cancer patients that usually are often called TPS, the
acronym for Treatment Planning System.
Cancer represents the second largest cause of death in Europe (Coleman et al.
2008, Ferlay et al. 2007). Radiotherapy is frequently used to treat it, on its own or
combined with other methods. Radiation therapy exposes the cancerous growth to
electron beams, X-rays or gamma rays that can kill the cells. It is effective because
of heightened sensitivity of the tumour cells to the radiation, relative to healthy
cells. In addition, the harmful effects of the radiation can be minimized by focusing
only on the particular area to be treated and shielding the remainder of the body.
There are two main types of radiotherapy: Brachytherapy, where the radiation is
generated inside the body of the patient by radioactive sources inserted inside or
around the tumour, and external radiotherapy, where the radiation comes from an
external source, commonly an electron accelerator or Linac. In this case, the tumour
is radiated from several angles so adding their individual contributions to the final
prescribed dose that can be delivered.
The external beam radiotherapy (also known as teletherapy) has two main tech-
niques: Conformal Radiotherapy (or CRT) where the X-ray beam takes the shape
of the tumour seen from the Linac, and Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (or
IMRT) where the strength and the form of the beam changes during the delivery, to
allow a better control of the dose. Because of the affectivity of the external radio-
therapy, other techniques have been recently released as Image Guide Radiotherapy
(IGRT) or hadrontherapy. Probably others will appear in the near future because of
the intense research activity in the field.
For every used technology, the treatment must be determined uniquely for each
patient. The doctor initially prescribes the dose (this means, the amount of radiation)
