Premium
TH‐A‐BRA‐01: Review of the Radiobiological Principles of Radiotherapy
Author(s) -
Orton C
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.3613463
Subject(s) - radiation therapy , radiobiology , repopulation , nuclear medicine , radiosensitivity , fractionation , dose fractionation , fraction (chemistry) , medicine , chemistry , biology , radiology , stem cell , genetics , organic chemistry , haematopoiesis
Mechanisms by which radiation kills cells and ways cell damage can be repaired will be reviewed. The effect of radiobiological parameters which we can control for radiotherapy will be discussed including dose/fraction, number of fractions, time between fractions, overall treatment time, and the LET of the radiation. Reasons why we fractionate the way we do will be discussed, along with how sparing of normal tissues using conformal techniques might affect optimal fractionation. The importance of time between fractions will be presented, especially if cancer cells which exhibit hyper‐radiosensitivity are present. The linear‐quadratic model for cell survival for high and low dose rate treatments and the effect of repopulation will be presented and discussed. The effect of LET will be presented as far as the RBE is concerned for both high and low doses. Learning Objectives: 1. To understand the importance for radiation therapy of dose/fraction, number of fractions, time between fractions, dose rate, overall treatment time, and the LET of the radiation. 2. To understand how geometrical sparing of normal tissues might affect optimal fractionation. 3. To understand the linear‐quadratic model for radiotherapy.