IMRT
When it comes to quality cancer radiation service in Kolkata, Dr. Sayan Paul is the name you can trust. He has been the pioneer in precision targeted therapy, including Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy for prostate cancer.
IMRT is an approach to cancer treatment that targets a tumour with high, conformal dose of radiation while restricting the exposure to adjacent healthy tissues and organs.
What are the benefits of IMRT
Some of the benefits of IMRT are as follows:
• It delivers higher doses of radiation needed for effectively shrinking or killing the cancerous cells in the tumour, regardless of its shape, size, or location, increasing the chances of cure.
• IMRT uses high-precision images (generated by computer programs) to plan and deliver tightly focused beams, thereby sparing the adjacent normal tissues. Therefore, side effects are reduced.
• It is possible to make re-treatment with radiation because the surrounding tissues initially received relatively less radiation than the traditional therapy. The beams are delivered to avoid critical structures.
• It offers the advantages of radiation therapy to a large number of cancer patients, including those who have deep-seated tumours or the ones found close to the vital organs.
IMRT uses multiple small radiation beams of various intensities that accurately conform to a tumour. The intensity of each beam is controlled, while the beam shape changes throughout each treatment using multi-leaf collimators, allowing a relatively uniform dose to the tumourand a sharp fall-off of the dose to the surrounding healthy organs.
IMRT Treatment Planning
Dr. Paul, one of Kolkata’s best oncologists, creates the following treatment plan for IMRT therapy:
• Patients are immobilized for delivering the treatment
• Once immobilized, the patient takes part in a session of radiotherapy simulation
• CT scan is performed during the treatment with an immobilization mask, while the entire area is scanned at intervals of 3 – 5 mm.
• CT scan slices are the target (tumour area) and other surrounding normal organ planes and dose-volume, histograms are generated.
• Dr. Paul uses digitally-reconstructed radiographs for verifying the treatment position.
• It is followed by the transfer of the treatment parameters to the machine.
• Online portal imaging is utilized for verifying whether the treatment is done exactly as planned.