PhD Defence Teun Pieter van Wagenberg

Keywords: Radiotherapy, High dose rate brachytherapy, Treatment verification, Dose calculation 
 

"Advances in Dose Calculation and Treatment Verification for High Dose Rate Brachytherapy"

This thesis focused on two innovations for high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy, a modality of radiotherapy with generally good treatment outcomes for cancer patients where a radioactive source is brought to the tumour to deposit dose locally. In the first part of the thesis, a novel dose calculation algorithm was validated for patients with liver cancer. It showed that HDR brachytherapy can be a good treatment option for liver cancer, by giving a high radiation dose to the tumour but sparing the surrounding healthy organs. In the second part of the thesis a novel treatment verification method was developed from concept to clinical prototype, which was eventually used to acquire data from real patients. The goal of this device is to track the radioactive source while it is inside the patient, which gives valuable information on the effectiveness of the brachytherapy treatment. This information can be provided immediately after (or potentially during) the treatment, which could speed up the full treatment course of the patient. 

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