Radiotherapy Physics Research Team

Location: Royal Marsden, Sutton

Section: Joint Department of Physics

Team Leaders: Professor Steve Webb, Dr Phil Evans and Dr Mike Partridge.

  

The research efforts of the Radiotherapy Physics Research Team is directed towards the long-term goal of implementing and evaluating a system of conformal radiotherapy to optimise the physical basis of 3D radiation therapy. It addresses all links in the 'chain' of events including optimising:

• The use of 3D medical images
• The automatic generation of volume outlines and margins
• The selection of beam orientations
• The techniques of dose calculation
• Methods to geometrically shape fields with a multileaf collimator (MLC)
• Methods to create intensity-modulated fields with an MLC
• Techniques for verification with electronic portal imaging, megavoltage computed tomography and transit dosimetry
• Techniques to experimentally measure 3D dose distributions
• Predicting biological outcome
• Clinical implementation within controlled trials