Radiumhemmet, Karolinska sjukhuset, Solna, Stockholm
Description
New methods of high dose delivery, such as intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT),
stereotactic radiation therapy (SRT) or stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), hadron therapy,
tomotherapy, etc., all make use of a few large fractions. To improve these treatments, there are
three main directions: (i) improving physical dose distribution, (ii) optimizing radiosurgery dosetime
scheme and (iii) modifying dose response of tumors or normal tissues.
Different radiation modalities and systems have been developed to deliver the best possible
physical dose to the target while keeping radiation to normal tissue minimum. Although
applications of radiobiological findings to clinical practice are still at an early stage, many studies
have shown that sublethal radiation damage repair kinetics plays an important role in tissue
response to radiation.
The purpose of the present thesis is to show how the above-mentioned directions could be used
to improve treatment outcomes with special interest in radiation modalities and dose-time scheme,
as well as radiobiological modeling. Also for arteriovenous malformations (AVM), the possible
impact of AVM network angiostructure in radiation response was studied.