Creating the Next Generation in Radiotherapy Imaging with Carbon Nanotube Sources and Photon Counting Detectors
Background
More than 14,000 Australians will be diagnosed with lung cancer over the next twelve months; of which 75% should receive radiation therapy but only 40% will, and under 25% will survive to 2029. Indigenous Australians are particularly at risk, being 2.1 times more likely to be diagnosed with and 1.8 times more likely to die of lung cancer compared to non-indigenous Australians. To combat this, a cost-effective solution that can be deployed in rural and regional locations is needed.
The current imaging capabilities of standard radiation therapy systems are only useful to the patient at the start of each treatment. They cannot adapt to how the patient has changed over the weeks of treatment and cannot see how the patient changes during treatment delivery. The limitations of current standard systems have motivated development of radiotherapy systems with integrated MRI imaging, but these systems can be prohibitively expensive, especially in regional areas.
About the Project
Dr Dillion and his team have developed innovative methods using under $0.5M of novel new x-ray hardware that can produce images of similar quality to MRI and acquire 3D images during treatment delivery. This will allow clinicians to adjust each treatment session to target the tumour and avoid healthy tissue, and make sure the treatment is being delivered correctly at every moment during treatment.
This project will achieve first-in-world integration of fundamentally new x-ray technology with a conventional radiation therapy system. The team will show that this technology makes it possible to adjust every treatment session and monitor throughout delivery. Pilot studies using MRI imaging to adjust every treatment has seen local control of tumours go from ~40% to as high as ~100%. The team’s approach brings this higher standard of care to standard radiation therapy systems.
The project combines medical device development, radiation oncology clinical trial and consumer expertise. The research team consists of global leaders, experts and inventors of the fundamentally new x-ray technologies being developed in this project.
Impact
The project aims to develop experimental research using the proposed hardware to show 3D imagining during treatment, MRI quality imaging during treatment and reconstructing actual delivered dose post treatment. This will allow clinicians to ensure that treatment is being delivered safely, and that planned treatments target only cancerous tissue, avoiding healthy tissue.
This will lead to shorter treatment periods, easing the cancer burden on Indigenous, rural and low-socioeconomic areas. With a close focus on lung cancer in Indigenous Australians, it is hoped that this project will greatly benefit the community with less time displaced from home, less time away from work and/or caring for family, and a reduction in the indirect costs of treatment.
In the long run, a clinical trial and commercial pathways developed out of the crucial research in this grant will bring improved imaging and care, and therefore improved outcomes, to a far wider patient cohort than what has been achieved so far with integrated MRI radiation therapy systems