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Methods and Advanced Equipment for Simulation and Treatment in Radio Oncology Project
objectives
: The
present project, MAESTRO, proposes innovative research to develop and validate
in clinical conditions the advanced methods and equipment needed in cancer
treatment for new modalities in high conformal external radiotherapy employing
electrons, photons and protons beams. Today’s
approaches to treat cancer are the surgical removal of the tumour tissue,
radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and immuno-therapy. Among them radiotherapy remains
a major technique to treat cancer. More than a half of all cancer patients are
now treated by radiation therapy thanks to the technical progress made with
irradiation equipment in the last ten years. The
project aims at improving the conformation of the dose delivered to the target
(tumoral tissues) whatever its shape in order to spare the surrounding tissues.
To do this new technologies in the field of patient positionning and organ
tracking, advanced software for treatment planning system, dose calculation and
measurement, are to be developed, and linked to the emerging IMRT (Intensity-Modulated
Radiation Therapy) technique and proton therapy. Programme
of activities : MAESTRO
incorporates major research and technological development programmes involving
clinics and industrials which will be linked throughout and described below. The
project includes 4 specific work packages on research and development activities
and two work packages of training and management activities :
- Adaptive Radiation delivery, tracking and control for radiotherapy (WP1), Potential
Impact
: The project has the potential to accelerate development of advanced devices, to insure their dissemination, to increase the compromise between treatment efficency and patient safety, to consolidate collaboration between European teams and to spread new methods and knowledge through workshops. A major expected result of the project is to decrease the number of deaths due to primary tumours without metastases.
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