Radiotherapy and the Human Brain

The major limitation of cancer treatment is normal tissuetolerance. When irradiating normal tissue, such as the normal braintissue, one of the principal causes of complications is damage tothe cerebral vasculature. If radiation is to benefit patients, itwould be beneficial to know or be able to predict the consequencesof irradiating the normal tissue. While there is some data relatingloss of perfusion to radiation dose in other tissues such as lung,there is very little data for the brain. This book describes andanalyzes the feasibility of an original method developed by theauthor in collaboration with the staff at the University ofCalgary, Tom Baker Cancer Centre and Foothills Hospital in Calgary,Canada to investigate the relationship between the change inhemodynamic measures and the radiation dose delivered to the normalbrain tissue following a typical brain tumour radiotherapyprocedure. A generous amount of space has been dedicated toexplaining some elementary concepts, since the book brings togetherinformation characteristic to various different fields, likePhysics, Medical Diagnostic Imaging and Cancer Treatment.