Last updated: Treatment Planning Strategies for Stereotactic Radiosurgery For intracranial radiosurgery treatments, we seek conformal high-dose radiation dose distributions with exceptionally sharp fall-off of the dose outside the treatment volume. Depending on the exact size, shape and location of the target volume, we have access to different treatment planning approaches to achieve these goals. We …
Last updated: Novel Use of 0.35T ViewRay MRI-guidance for High Dose Rate Brachytherapy in the Treatment of Cervical Cancer Image-guided adaptive brachytherapy for cervical cancer has resulted in improved outcomes and/or decreased toxicity rates for many cervical patients compared to prior 2D/fluoroscopic-based planning. We sought to evaluate the 0.35T MRI on our ViewRay system for …
Last updated: My lifelong goal is to continue the path of elevated level of research in the field of radiation therapy. Millions of patients around the world are diagnosed with cancer every year. More than 50 percent of them require radiation therapy to manage their disease. During the last five decades, radiation therapy has advanced …
Last updated: For nearly two decades, balloon-based high dose-rate applicators for irradiation of breast lumpectomy cavities has been an effective treatment for women with early-stage breast cancer. Recently, our institution developed a novel double-balloon applicator that allows for a customizable distance of the radiation source from the breast tissue. However, this customizability may potentially result …
Last updated: Clinical Treatment Planning System Our problem definition is inspired by asking what we can do better for our current patients and what we would want to do if we just had the right tools on hand. Thus, significant effort is being spent on implementing a new clinical treatment planning system for patient care. …
Last updated: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)-Guided Breast Radiation The University of Wisconsin is one of the first radiation oncology clinics in the world to offer treatment with the ViewRay treatment system. This allows us to monitor patients with MRI in real time before and during the delivery of radiation therapy, ensuring the most precise treatment …
Last updated: Improving tumor delineation in the pancreas and liver through dual-energy CT Tumor delineation in the pancreas and liver can be a challenge using conventional CT images. Dual-Energy CT provides many opportunities to better delineate tumor from healthy tissue and therefore has great potential to aid in radiation therapy. The Department of Human Oncology …
Last updated: Theranostics, Radiopharmaceutical Therapy, and Dosimetry A central focus of my research is the development and clinical translation of imaging methods for theranostic and radiopharmaceutical therapy workflows. This includes optimizing imaging for quantitative accuracy and reproducibility and integrating these data into patient-specific, voxel-level dosimetry frameworks. By combining advanced imaging with state-of-the-art dose calculation techniques, …
Last updated: Introduction of 6 MV Flattening Filter Free Photon Beams The physics team in the Department of Human Oncology has prepared a new treatment modality for fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy (FSRT) and stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) on our Varian TrueBeam linear accelerators. This modality is a different kind of photon beam without a flattening filter—known …
Last updated: Translational research in lung cancer brain metastases Current efforts are focused on understanding the molecular basis for the development and progression of NSCLC brain metastases as well as developing and evaluating novel therapeutic strategies for NSCLC brain metastases. This includes the development of patient derived xenografts (PDXs) from patients with NSCLC as well …