"Cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center are receiving added treatment scrutiny, via real-time monitoring of the radiation dose delivered during their treatments. This treatment verification is enabled by a Cherenkov imaging system, which provides real-time visualization of each radiation beam," reports Physics World.

..."The Dartmouth team, led by Lesley Jarvis, conducted a study examining the practical utility of Cherenkov imaging in clinical radiotherapy practice. The researchers evaluated the system in 64 patients who received radiotherapy at Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center. Patients were treated for breast cancer (29), sarcoma/lymphomas (23) and other cancers, using techniques including 3D conformal radiotherapy, total skin electron therapy, arc therapy and total body irradiation. Jarvis and colleagues published their findings in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics."

..."Co-author [and Dartmouth Engineering Professor] Brian Pogue, co-founder and president of DoseOptics, tells Physics World that the research team is now planning a large, retrospective analysis of clinical data of patients receiving radiotherapy at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, to determine the incident rate detection and the value of Cherenkov imaging in daily monitoring of all treatments. He notes that Cherenkov imaging of all radiation oncology patients within the cancer centre began in the autumn of 2020. The BeamSite camera system received 510(k) clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration in December 2020.

"'We will compare the value of incident detection at each of our two cancer centres. Only one uses surface guidance tools, so there may be interesting differences in daily patient alignment that Cherenkov imaging may better identify,' explains Pogue. 'We are also investigating the ability to match lines between adjacent treatment fields, as well as quantifying absolute dose by using a calibration of the Cherenkov attenuation from a patient’s CT scan. We hope to implement this potentially for quantitative dose imaging.'"

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