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Press release
On the cutting edge of radiation therapy | |||
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Paris, October 29, 2002 |
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the CNRS, the “Health Engineering” team at the Centre de Recherche
en Automatique de Nancy* (CRAN) has tackled the challenge
of optimizing radiation treatment protocols. To ensure greater efficacy
in irradiating cancerous tumors, these specialists are using the most modern
medical methods and equipment (intensity modulated radiotherapy, PET-scan)
and advanced imaging and signal processing techniques (i.e. genetic algorithms,
multi-modality image correlation, 3D reconstruction). Radiation therapy is one of the most active fields of medical engineering in terms of research. This work, which couples imaging and signal processing and optimization, requires constant dialogue with the medical field. After more than 20 years of close collaboration with the Alexis Vautrin Cancer Center in Lorraine, France, the CRAN (Centre de Recherche en Automatique de Nancy), under the authority of STIC department (Sciences et Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication), now boasts an internationally renown radiotherapy research team. CRAN’s health engineering team, led by professor Didier Wolf, includes signal processing and automation specialists, a surgeon, radiophysicists and radiotherapists. “In France, no other team is operating like that,” reported Claude Iung, the laboratory’s assistant director. All the team’s research is focused on a single objective: maximizing the dose of radiation exposed to the targeted cancerous tissue while minimizing exposure to adjacent healthy tissues. The conventional technique involves pointing several beams at the target in order to distribute the dose of radiation along the paths of several different beams. But a variation in the intensity of the beams has enabled even better results: this technique, known as intensity-modulated radiotherapy, developed a few years ago, is more accurate and far more adaptable. Clinical treatments were begun less than a year ago at the Alexis Vautrin Cancer Center, the study’s pilot site. Claude Iung’s team is in charge of all optimization calculations; this involves determining the optimal modulation and position of the beams, depending on the radiotherapist’s specifications. A number of theses have been drafted in the laboratory on this subject in recent years. Given the high number of variables, scientists are using genetic algorithms (the best parameters are selected generation after generation). To further refine the technique, they are also planning to measure the exact dose delivered to specific points during a patient’s radiation therapy sessions. “This would enable us to improve our calculation models,” explained Claude Iung. “The greater the accuracy, the more radiation we can afford to expose the patient to. But the higher the dose, the more critical the accuracy…” For even greater efficacy, the location of the tumor must be very precise. To ensure such precision, specialists have been correlating or merging external and internal images in order to reconstruct a highly detailed 3D image. Internal images are now obtained use MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) imaging technology. The recent installation of a PET (positron emission tomography) scanner at Nancy’s University Hospital will help provide further information and facilitate the positioning task. Notes: *Created in 1980, CRAN is a laboratory jointly operated by the University Henri Poincaré-Nancy I and the Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine, under the auspices of the CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Département Sciences et Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication - STIC) Researcher
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