Image-Guided Radiotherapy of Lung Cancer

Book excerpt: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, but IGRT (image guided radiation therapy) offers the possibility of more aggressive and enhanced treatments. The only available source on the subject that emphasizes new imaging techniques, and provides step-by-step treatment guidelines for lung cancer, this source helps clinicians locate and target tumors with enhanced speed, improve the accuracy of radiation delivery, and correctly target cancerous masses while avoiding surrounding structures. Edited by radiation oncology experts from the renowned M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, this guide: focuses on novel approaches using IGRT, particularly PET/CT, SPECT, 4-D CT, stereotactic body radiation therapy, IMRT and proton radiotherapy, and offers expert guidance on the dose, fractionation, target volume delineation (including recommended margins with and without respiratory gating based on our new 4-D CT study), and normal tissue tolerances stands as the first step-by-step guide for radiation oncologists to implement new image-guided techniques into their day-to-day clinical practice, and considers the practical issues of implementing these approaches into their routine helps clinicians use imaging technologies to detect changes in tumor size, shape, position, or metabolism over a course of radiotherapy treatment provides disease stage-specific treatment guidelines and clearly lays out imaging techniques serves as roadmap for future research and development