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PhD Studentship on Treating Tumours that move with respiration on an MR-Linac
16 June 2016
This PhD studentship is based jointly at the
Respiratory motion causes errors and uncertainties when planning and delivering radiotherapy (RT) treatment to tumours in the thorax and abdomen, e.g. lung tumours and liver tumours.
Current clinical practice is to either add margins to the target to account for the motion, thus irradiating more healthy tissue than for a static tumour, or to implant markers in the tumour so that its position can be determined during treatment, enabling gated delivery (when the RT bean is only switched on when the tumour is in the correct location) or tracked delivery (where the beam is made to follow the tumour's motion).
An MR-Linac is a hybrid technology that combines an MR scanner and a linac (linear accelerator - used to deliver RT treatment) into a single system. Such a system is currently being developed by Elekta and Philips, and a prototype of their system is due to be installed at ICR in 2016. This system can acquire MR images in real-time, while the RT treatment is being delivered, and will enable far superior image guidance to what is currently available, i.e. x-ray projection imaging, and will be invaluable for treating moving targets.
However, for guiding RT treatments we would ideally like high quality 3D volumetric data that can be used to determine the motion of both the tumour and the surrounding healthy tissue, but it is not possible to acquire such data fast enough on an MR scanner to image the respiratory motion. This project will investigate how to make best use of the real-time image data that can be acquired on the MR-Linac for guiding RT treatment.
This will involve developing novel methodologies that can infer the full 3D motion from the limited real-time imaging data available, and uses fast and efficient implementations and 'predict-ahead' approaches to provide the relevant information fast enough for guiding the treatment delivery.
The project will also involve extensive validation of the methods being developed, and close integration with the tracked treatment delivery methods being developed at ICR and with the Elekta-Philips MR-Linac system.
This is a funded position. Interested applicants should apply via the Prism website.
Any questions regarding this studentship should be forwarded to Dr Jamie McCelland
Email: j.mcclelland@ucl.ac.uk
Closing Date 15th July 2016
By Rebecca Holmes, EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in for Medical Imaging