Ning J. Yue, Ph.D., Professor,
Ting Chen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Wei Zou, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Radiation oncology is one of the three major treatment modalities to manage cancer patient cares, and is a discipline mainly driven by technology and medical devices. Modern radiation treatments have become fairly complex and involve in utilizing a variety of medical devices to achieve the goal of providing conformal radiation dose coverage to the tumor target(s) while maximizing the sparing of normal organ structures. Recently, different forms of linear accelerators/radioactive source based machines have been invented and developed with the aim of providing improved treatments and more treatment options. Besides linear accelerators (Linac) that have been undergoing constant improvement and advancement and can deliver fairly complicated dose distribution patterns, imaging systems, computer information and calculation systems have been more and more integrated into radiotherapy processes. To bring radiotherapy to a potentially higher level, many institutions have either acquired or started to consider particle therapy, especially proton therapy. The complexity of modern radiotherapy demands in-depth understanding of radiation physics and machine engineering as well as computer information systems. This paper is intended to provide an introductory description of radiation oncology and related procedures, and to provide an overview of the current status of medical devices in radiotherapy in the United States of America. This paper covers the radiation delivery systems, imaging systems, treatment planning systems, record and verify systems, and QA systems.
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