[Triumf-seminars] TRIUMF Accelerator Seminar today at 14:30

[TRIUMF Seminars]

Date/Time: Wed 2019-07-03 at 14:30

Location:  ISAC-II Conf. Room  

Speaker:   Magdalena Bazalova-Carter (UVic)

Title:     FLASH/microbeam radiotherapy at TRIUMF

Abstract: Radiation therapy, one of the three main treatment options of cancer patients, is not only known for its benefits, but also for its negative side effects. Among those, fatigue, nausea, hair loss and skin problems are the most common radiotherapy side effects. Examples of more severe side effects are problems with memory and speech for brain treatments, vision and hearing problems for head and neck treatments, radiation pneumonitis and fibrosis for chest treatments and incontinence and fertility and sexual problems for treatments of the pelvis.
In this talk I will present the goal of our collaborative UVic-TRIUMF research, which is to decrease, if not eliminate the side effects of radiotherapy by combining two novel treatment techniques: ultra-fast (FLASH) radiotherapy and spatially fractionated microbeam therapy (MRT). FLASH radiotherapy consists of delivering radiation in the span of few seconds, much faster than the current state-of-the-art multi-minute delivery. Unlike the current radiotherapy delivered with a broad beam, MRT is delivered with a large number of submillimeter beams. Small animal studies have demonstrated that both FLASH and MRT result in decreased radiotherapy side effects while maintaining the ability to kill cancer cells. Both delivery techniques require complex modifications to already specialized equipment and their investigations are therefore limited. In this talks I will discuss how we propose to build a FLASH/microbeam irradiation site at TRIUMF at the ARIEL beamline.



Stimulants available 15 minutes before the talk.

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General TRIUMF seminar information available at http://www.triumf.ca/home/upcoming-events/about-seminars-lectures