LGBIO2070 - Engineering challenges in protontherapy

Protontherapy gains more and more importance as an alternative treatment modality to radiotherapy with photons for specific types of patients and cancers. Compared to photons, protons deposit their energy in a much more localized area, which allows for both more focused tumor targeting and reduced side effects.

The course builds upon 4 pillars:

Pillar 1: radiation oncology.

  • Basis of cancer and carcinogenesis

  • Treating cancer with radiations: principles and elements of radiobiology

  • Main steps of a radiotherapy workflow

  • Introduction to particle therapy: principles and current status

  • Radioprotection: treatment facility shielding, personnel and patient protection

  • Health economics: treatment options and patient referral, reimbursement and impact on social security service.

Pillar 2: technologies for protontherapy. This pillar provides a specific focus on the proton beam delivery process, i.e. from proton generation and acceleration (synchrotron/cyclotron) to energy deposition into a well-defined location in the patient, including magnetic beam steering.

  • Producing and accelerating protons: cyclotrons and synchrotrons

  • Detailed design of cyclotrons (and synchro-cyclotrons)

  • Beamlines, magneto-optics

  • Robotics: rotating structures, positioning systems

  • Therapeutic beam: pencil beam scanning

  • Safety and quality assurance in medical technologies : safety automats, interlocks, redundancies, beam measurement devices (monitor ion chambers) and beam data analysis

Pillar 3: ancillary technologies for proton therapy. This pillar covers the devices and data flows associated with treatment preparation, execution, and verification, with all their specificities, compared to conventional radiotherapy treatment (X-rays).

  • Treatment planning system (TPS), oncology information system (OIS), imaging; the role of software integration

  • Dose calculation including analytical and Monte Carlo dose engines, treatment optimization, treatment robustness against uncertainties, and robust optimization

  • Imaging in or out of the room (computed tomography (CT), on-board cone-beam CT (CBCT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)). Image reconstruction and analyses.

  • Range verification: prompt gamma camera, proton radiography, positron emission tomography (PET))

Pillar 4: treatments of the future.

  • Image guidance: status and perspectives, and the way towards adaptive treatments

  • Overcoming challenges of PT: innovation tracks (range uncertainties, proton imaging, etc.)

  • Emerging treatments: introduction to ion beam therapy

  • Emerging treatments: combining radiations and medication