Contents


Preface

This book offers a comprehensive review of challenges and opportunities in the modern application of radiation therapy. As therapy has evolved into calculating radiation dose as a volume and applying modern tools for treatment execution, this book addresses several issues that affect modern management. Dose modeling processes are evolving into three- and four-dimensional processes and this book examines how linear quadratic models can be repurposed for treatment execution and computation. This will be especially important as additional layers of care including brachytherapy and radiopharmaceutical care become commonplace and part of daily composite radiation therapy treatment planning integrating the role of radiation therapy dose rate and radiobiological effectiveness with different therapy treatment modalities. Multiple image sets will be required for fusion into radiation therapy planning imaging in order to generate target volumes for treatment. The role of radiogenomics and dose painting will expand to include dose augmentation to volumetric subsets of tumor areas representing features consistent with both resistance and response to therapy. Modern aspects of care for patients with cervical cancer, prostate cancer, and hepatic therapy are discussed at length and represent many of the challenges of modern care. Finally, the last chapter helps define the ultimate goal of our practice by defining the late effects of treatment and what we should consider to mitigate these issues for patients moving forward. We wish to

thank all the contributing authors and we hope you enjoy the book.

**Thomas J. FitzGerald MD**

Worcester, MA, USA

Department of Radiation Oncology,

University of Massachusetts Medical School,
