Treatment planning comparison for head and neck cancer between photon, proton, and combined proton –photon therapy – From a fixed beam line to an arc

Head and neck cancers (HNC) are a major indication for radiotherapy (RT), with state-of-the-art treatment usually involving photon-based irradiation techniques such as IMRT/VMAT or tomotherapy [1 –4]. Such treatments are widely available in RT clinics, relatively cheap and are considered to be relatively insensitive to the anatomical changes of a patient that are common during RT in the head and neck region [5–7]. Nevertheless, many cases remain challenging for photon RT [8,9]. As such, alternative techniques such as pencil beam scanning (PBS) proton therapy (PT) [10,11] are increasingly being used for HNCs [12–16], as they provide additional flexibility for sparing normal tissues in this challenging treatment area.

Source: Radiotherapy and Oncology - October 30, 2023 Category: Radiology Authors: Florian Amstutz, Reinhardt Krcek, Barbara Bachtiary, Damien C. Weber, Antony J. Lomax, Jan Unkelbach, Ye Zhang Tags: Original Article Source Type: research