“Visualization and quantification of tumour biology for personalized radiotherapy”

Keywords: tumour biology, non-invasive imaging

There are many types of cancer and there are significant differences between patients, between tumours, and even within a single tumour. These differences make cancer a difficult disease to cure and tend to result in different treatment outcomes. Functional imaging is a minimally invasive method of examining tumour biology in 3D. This dissertation used functional imaging techniques to classify the tumour and examine tumour sub-volumes. The absorption of a labelled drug, tumour circulation, tumour metabolism and tumour oxygen deficiency were measured and tested as markers to determine patient prognoses, to predict the treatment outcome and to adjust radiotherapy treatment plans.