Home > Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering > Radiotherapy physics

Radiotherapy physics

Services| | Development work| | Contact us|

Approximately 3,000 radiotherapy patients each year are treated in Oxford. The links with clinical oncology are strong, and we foster a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to the care of cancer patients, between oncologists, physicists, radiographers, technologists and clerical staff.

We also collaborate with Oxford University, in particular the Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology.

In the Cancer and Haematology Centre we have:

• six matched linear accelerators with intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) capability, MV portal imaging and real-time position management (RPM gating). Two of these linear accelerators also have kV image guidance and cone beam CT
• a Pulsed Dose Rate (PDR) brachytherapy afterloader
• CT scanner for radiotherapy planning and simulator with CBCT.

Services we provide

• Dosimetry and calibration.
• Expert advice on optimisation of treatment planning, verification and delivery. (Conformal using multi-leafed collimators (MLC) and field-in-field.)
• Equipment quality assurance.
• In-vivo dosimetry using diodes and thermo-luminescent dosimeters.
• Support of imaging for radiotherapy planning and verification. This includes MR-CT fusion.
• Total body irradiation (TBI).
• The Oxford Cancer and Haematology Centre also host a positron emission tomography (PET) service. This is used to guide radiotherapy planning.
• Training radiotherapy physicists as part of the IPEM part I training scheme and as part of the ACS / HPC part II scheme.
• Training for the IPEM clinical technologist training scheme.

Development work

• National and international clinical trials.
• IMRT.
• Respiratory motion management to facilitate 4D treatment planning and gated treatment delivery.
• Clinical radiobiology.
• Field-in-field planning for TBI.
• Introduction of interstitial fiducial markers to aid image guidance and the application of on-line set-up correction protocols.
• Extension of image fusion to other clinical sites, and other imaging modalities.
• Optimisation of image quality across the radiotherapy pathway.
• Development of IQWorks image analysis software.
• Development and hardening of radiotherapy information systems infrastructure.

A comprehensive guide to the provision of a physics service to radiotherapy can be found on the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine| website.

Find us and contact us

• Mrs Elizabeth Macaulay
  Head of Radiotherapy Physics
  Department of Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering
  Churchill Hospital
  
  Email: elizabeth.macaulay@ouh.nhs.uk
  Tel: 01865 235516