Radiation Therapy

Software that draws organs and tumours on scans automatically, saving hours per patient and making daily plan adaptation practical.

In boron neutron capture therapy a boron drug accumulates in tumour cells, then a neutron beam makes only those cells explode from inside.

Brachytherapy places a radioactive source directly inside or next to the tumour.

Heavier charged particles that kill even radiation-resistant tumours, available at only a handful of centres worldwide.

Delivering an entire dose in under a second, which in animals spares healthy tissue while still killing the tumour.

Hyperthermia heats tumours to 40-43 °C to make radiation and chemotherapy work better.

Radiation shaped precisely to the tumour and checked with daily imaging, sparing surrounding organs.

Giving a single large dose of radiation directly to the tumour bed during surgery, with normal organs moved out of the way; used mainly in breast cancer as an alternative to weeks of external radiotherapy.

Deliberately treating a big tumour unevenly, with a lattice of very high dose peaks inside it, instead of a uniform dose.

Magnetic nanoparticle hyperthermia injects iron-oxide nanoparticles into a tumour and heats them from outside with an alternating magnetic field.

The MR-linac is a radiation machine with an MRI inside it, so the plan is adjusted to where the tumour is that very day.

Short courses of radiation, often a single treatment, to relieve pain from bone metastases, stop bleeding, open blocked airways or protect the spinal cord. Among the most cost-effective treatments in cancer.

Small-cell lung cancer spreads to the brain so often that doctors used to irradiate the whole brain pre-emptively. Regular MRI scans are now challenging that practice.

Rotating the proton beam continuously around the patient instead of firing from a few fixed angles, to spread the entrance dose and sharpen the target dose.

Radiation using protons, which stop inside the tumour instead of passing through, so tissue behind it gets no dose.

Nanoparticles that turn ordinary radiotherapy X-rays into a much bigger dose exactly where they sit.

Millions of tiny radioactive glass or resin beads are injected into the liver artery, lodging in the tumour and irradiating it from within.

Using the thyroid's natural appetite for iodine to image and treat thyroid cancer with a radioactive form of it. The oldest theranostic, and now used more selectively than it was.

A drug that finds tumour cells and carries a radioactive atom that irradiates them from inside the body.

The software that calculates exactly how radiation beams should be shaped and checks the machine delivered it.

Very high, very precise radiation doses in 1-5 sessions that can ablate a tumour like surgery.

A drug that does nothing until ultrasound hits it, then kills the cells that took it up. Being tested in brain tumours because sound reaches where light cannot.

Using very fast electrons instead of photons or protons: a possible way to deliver FLASH-speed radiation to deep tumours from a compact machine.