Targeting Cancer in 3-D

Reported January 2007

CHICAGO (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- More than half of all cancer patients will have radiation therapy. Planning treatment is tough for doctors because they have to look at stagnant images and visualize exactly where a tumor is located. Now, a 3-D dome gives them a better view.

When doctors give a radiation treatment, they see hundreds of images -- images they have to piece together to plan where to put their beams.

"Left then looking slice by slice at a large number of sequential images and trying to stack them up, so to speak, in the mind's eye," Ross Abrams, M.D., a radiation oncologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, tells Ivanhoe.

Now, medical physicists at Rush University Medical Center are using a new device to help doctors see images like never before. Instead of viewing two-dimensional pictures, the Perspecta Spatial 3-D dome lets them see the tumor in 3-D, offering two main benefits...

"Number one -- come up with a better quality plan because they can use a better beam orientation, and number two -- they will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the plan much more quickly," James Chu, Ph.D., a medical physicist at Rush University Medical Center, tells Ivanhoe.

Dr. Abrams says, "It lets you see all the information at once rather than seeing it slice-by-slice or bit-by-bit."

It's a difference doctors hope will improve treatment for millions.

The two-d images are transported from a computer to the Perspecta. The machine calculates the images and sends them upward. They then hit three mirrors and reflect onto a rotating projector screen in the dome.

In the first research study, the Perspecta was better at helping doctors plan radiation about half the time. Researchers hope improvements in the technology will make it better all the time. The Perspecta can make images from X-rays, MRIs, CT and PET scans 3-D. Right now, only three centers in the country have the technology.

The American Association of Physicists in Medicine contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Ben Stein
American Institute of Physics
(for the American Association of Physicists in Medicine)
(301) 209-3088
bstein@aip.org

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