Evolution of Radiotherapy: High-precision Radiotherapy

ABSTRACT

Technological advances that have been achieved over the last two decades in the area of treatment planning and sophisticated and complicated hardware capabilities, such as computer-controlled treatments, multileaf collimators, and incorporating imaging devices into treatment machines, enable clinical implementation of high-precision radiotherapy in field of radiation oncology. High-precision radiotherapy allows the delivery of increased tumor doses with relative sparing of normal tissues compared to 3 -dimensional radiotherapy and conventional techniques. Preliminary clinical experiences of high precision radiation therapy have been encouraging by high rates of local control and decrease of toxicity. This article provides an overview of high precision radiotherapy such as intensity-modulated radiotherapy, stereotactic radiation therapy, image-guided radiotherapy, and charged particle therapy.