Published in MPW, 7 May 2014
Cerenkoscopy – the monitoring of radiation therapy using Cerenkov radiation – has been tested on a human patient for the first time by scientists in the US. The technique, which involves capturing the flashes of Cerenkov light produced as radiation penetrates tissue, could improve the success of radiotherapy by visualizing radiation dose in real time (Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. doi: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2014.01.046).
Side effects of radiation therapy can only be minimized by carefully regulating radiation doses, but knowing exactly how much radiation enters a body is not easy to assess. Normally, treatment is planned according to computer simulations generated by CT scans, and, at select points during a course of treatment, a patient can also have a detector inserted into them to estimate the amount of incident radiation. Such methods are not foolproof, however: a patient could lose weight, for instance, leading to a relatively high dose. […]
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