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Anna Vella is designing CAPULET: a device to increase the accuracy in delivering particle beam radiotherapy in cancer treatment

Proton Beam Therapy Machine

Proton-beam-therapy (PBT) is becoming increasingly important for treating cancer, with projected increases of up to 50% more patients per year being treated with the technology in the UK and worldwide by 2025.

Although the precision of PBT has many advantages over traditional radiotherapy, there some uncertainty over the range of delivery the beam provides. There is risk of potential overdose to normal tissues or underdose to tumour, resulting in reduced tumour-control and long-term side-effects due to treatment of healthy tissue. This can be detrimental to patients and a burden on healthcare systems if side-effects become apparent later in a patient’s life.

Therefore, a method to verify the range of treatment beams when using PBT on patients is crucial to increase the treatment accuracy. Dr Anna Vella, Postdoctoral with the Radiation Therapy Medical Physics Group, led by Prof. Frank Van Den Heuvel, at the University of Oxford’s Department of Oncology, is investigating the efficacy of a device with this purpose.

Anna is leading CAPULET (Coded Aperture Prompt-gamma Ultra-Light imaging detector), an imaging device for quality assurance assessment of radiotherapy plan efficacy, designed for daily use in clinical practice. CAPULET could be installed onto a variety of PBT devices, and used to verify and fine-tune the dose between fractions in particle-beam radiotherapy. It does this through collecting 3D images of the particle beam penetrating soft-tissue, with the ultimate goal to fine-tune planning doses and improving the efficacy of the overall radiotherapy treatment.

This novel and unique technology is faster & more compact than current devices, increases the field-of-view, and improves the signal-to-noise ratio. The impact on patients will be to improve cancer-control, fewer complications, and improved quality-of-life following treatment.

CAPULET has recently been selected as one of 35 projects in the Pre-Development Phase of the Alderley Park Oncology Development Programme – a national programme designed to develop and progress start-up oncology projects. Funded by Innovate UK and Cancer Research UK. It will now be work-shopped, and potentially be chosen to join the full development programme with grant funding.

Proof-of-concept experiments will be performed in collaboration with the CRUK-funded ART-NET. The long-term plan of CAPULET is to develop a large-area detector to fully image the beam delivery range within lungs, liver, H&N and other large sites in the human body to overcome limited field-of-view found in other existing devices on the market.

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