Radiological Physics - Radiotherapy

Course guarantor:

Irena Koniarová

Lecturer:

Irena Koniarová, Matěj Navrátil, Josef Novotný

Tutor:

Irena Koniarová, Tomáš Veselský

Supervisor:

Department of Dosimetry and Application of Ionizing Radiation

Synopsis:

Curriculum offers introduction to medical physics in radiotherapy. It covers optimisation in inverse planning, physical and technical realisation of advanced radiotherapy methods, verifications in radiotherapy, radiobiology models, adaptive radiotherapy, image guided radiation therapy, algorithms for dose calculation, and evaluation of quality of radiotherapy treatment plans.

Requirements:

To obtain the course credit, it is required to achieve more than 70% of the points in the credit test and to submit the homework assignment.

For the final examination, students must achieve more than 70% in the written test and subsequently successfully answer three questions in the oral part of the exam.

Syllabus of lectures:

1. Introduction to Optimization development of IMRT, conformity, objective function, analytical methods, iterative methods (gradient technique, simulated annealing, particle swarm optimization), multicriteria optimization

2. Physical and Technical Implementation of IMRT and VMAT fluence maps, multileaf collimator, linear accelerator techniques (IMRT step-and-shoot, IMRT sliding window, VMAT), QA, tomotherapy

3. Image-Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT) concepts of target volumes, respiration-induced effects, 4D CT, gating, QA

4. Radiobiological Models I classification of radiosensitivity, Strandqvist plots, NSD, TDF, cell survival curves, target theory, LQ model, EQD2, BED, methods for compensation of missed fractions

5. Radiobiological Models II tumor stem cells, acute and late tissue reactions, gEUD, TCP, NTCP

6. Dose Calculation Algorithms I empirical factors, Clarksons sector integration algorithm, PBK

7. Dose Calculation Algorithms II Collapsed Cone, AAA, Acuros, Monte Carlo

8. Evaluation of Radiotherapy Treatment Plan Quality DVH, isodose map review, texture analysis, automated planning, plan complexity, and robustness

9. Verification in Radiotherapy gamma analysis

10. Specific Aspects of Radiation Protection in Radiotherapy pregnancy, pacemakers, treatment room shielding calculations

11. Adaptive Radiotherapy online and offline approaches, target tracking, CyberKnife, MR-linac, image registration methods

12. Advanced Brachytherapy for Medical Physicists

Syllabus of tutorials:

The exercise follows the outline of the lectures.

Study Objective:

Knowledge:

Advanced techniques of radiotherapy, radiobiology of ionizing radiation in radiotherapy.

Abilities:

Advanced use of radiotherapeutic methods in oncology applications.

Study materials:

Key references:

[1] Faiz M. Khan, The Physics of Radiation Therapy, 2007

[2] Amy Heath, Radiation Therapy Study Guide, Springer, 2016

[3] Jacob Van Dyk, The Modern Technology of Radiation Oncology: A Compendium for Medical Physicists and Radiation Oncologists, Steel, Washington, 2000

Recommended references:

[4] Steve Webb, et al, The Physics of Conformal Radiotherapy: Advances in Technology (Medical Science Series) 1997

[5] G. Steel, Basic Clinical Radiobiology, 2002

Note:

Time-table for winter semester 2025/2026:

Time-table is not available yet

Time-table for summer semester 2025/2026:

Time-table is not available yet

The course is a part of the following study plans:

• Radiolgická fyzika (compulsory course in the program)