Image guided brachytherapy - Interventional radiation therapy: Demands from physician point of view

Abstract

The further development of image-guided brachytherapy as modern interventional radiation therapy is strongly depend from the capability of diagnostic equipment and procedures to meet special demands of image-guided brachytherapy. The basic aspect and principles of brachytherapy and hence most important demands of diagnostic equipment and procedures dedicated for the image-guided brachytherapy are identified and discussed. It is evident, that all currently available diagnostic procedures such Ultrasound, CT, MRI or PET-CT can only partially meet the special requirements of brachytherapy. The challenge for developers of new hardware's and software's of diagnostic equipment / procedures for image-guided brachytherapy is simply first further develop each imaging procedures in accordance with these special requirements and second to make possible the match easily images of everybody diagnostic device each together and so by integration of pre-operative CT, PET-CT or MRI images generate a precise real-time three-dimensional anatomical model of the site.