Planning Radiation Treatments
How do we plan out external radiation?
Our technology is first rate and university level. We feature several alternative ways of treating patients.
- We also use air filled customized contouring devices that help you maintain your accurate position on the treatment table and are referred to as immobilization devices.
- Computerized planning is the central core of our center. We have our own CT simulator in our department to help us localize the tumor and the critical surrounding organs.
- The doctors 'contour' each structure seen. When the structure is less clear, at times we use CT PET scanning and other imaging tools to help us attain accuracy.
- Following that, our dosimetrist develops a computer based plan to treat the tumor and spare the normal tissues to the greates degree possible. We call this optimization of the plan.
- Following that our physicist verifies that everything meets our rigid criteria. In some cases the physicist stays after hours to verify that the computerized plan does indeed deliver exactly the required dose to the tumor.
- All of this data is enterred into our computerized treatment delivery system to control all aspects of the treatment delivery.
- Next you will have an appointment to 'try on' the designed plan. The treatment therapists will try and make sure that the planned treatment course fits you to a T and is able to be reproduced.
- Once that has been confirmed the daily treatments will commence.
- On a daily basis the treatment team confirms the accurate placement of the radiation fields to coincide with the planned and confirmed treatment plan.
- If you have had marker seeds placed for detecting bodily motion that can alter your internal anatomy, than the treatment fields are adjusted to match with the new match point within the body. An example of this would be for prostate cancer patients who have their prostate still in the body. We place marker seeds within the prostate to monitor its movement due to bowel, bladder and patient movement.
- Also, we take weekly port films to also assess the accuracy of our treatment technique.
