Radiotherapy treatments seek to deliver a tightly conformal dose of radiation to a tumour, while sparing nearby healthy organs. Tumour and organ motion due to physiological processes such as respiration can cause a blurring of the delivered dose which decreases the dose to the tumour and increases dose to healthy tissues. Furthermore, radiotherapy treatments are typically not delivered in a single session but rather in multiple treatment ‘fractions’ delivered over several weeks. Anatomical changes due to treatment response or disease progression may cause deviations of the radiation dose delivered to the tumour from the intended dose.
My research group has developed simulation tools for estimating the impact of anatomical changes on radiotherapy treatments. Potential summer student projects would involve applying or extending these tools to different scenarios, for example looking at the dosimetric impact of prostate swelling following implant of radioactive seeds (prostate brachytherapy) or developing organ motion models from different imaging modalities such as cone-beam CT. Some programming experience is required.