Spring into STEM: Supporting preclinical irradiation research

Preclinical research involving irradiation plays an important role in the translational pathway towards better and more personalized clinical radiotherapy. Standardizing verification of preclinical irradiations increases confidence in the dose delivered and therefore on the results arising from the experiments.

We designed and implemented and E2E dosimetry test, that with the use of an anatomically correct mouse phantom, simulates all the steps of the image guided radiation treatment process of small animals: positioning, imagining, contouring of planning volume, targeting and dose delivery. Instead of an specific tumoral volume, an alanine pellet (passive dose detector) is irradiated and the dose calculated with the treatment planning system is compared to the measured dose. 100 % of analysed dose differences, from the six participant institutions, were within +/- 10% (87.5% within +/-5%). That result is an indication of the level of accuracy that is possible to achieve while delivering dose to targeted volumes in relevant mice irradiation conditions for preclinical research.

The work demonstrated that alanine is a suitable detector and that the developed end-to-end test, in combination with a purposely designed phantom is adequate to support the efforts in improving and harmonizing dosimetry verification for preclinical irradiations.

About the Speaker

Ileana works at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) as a research scientist in the area of radiation dosimetry. Previously, she developed her career working as a clinical medical physicist specialized in radiotherapy. Ileana is combining her work at NPL with a part-time PhD with UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering. The PhD is giving her the possibility to investigate and introduce methodologies that would contribute to the standardization and harmonization of dosimetry of preclinical irradiations. Using her clinical experience, she is translating methods that have supported harmonization of clinical dosimetric challenges like those involving small fields and quality assurance of treatments to the preclinical space.

Our taster lectures will give you a chance to find out about the subjects we teach and research, you'll be able to meet our lecturers and researchers and you can put your questions to the team. We look forward to welcoming you.

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