Radiation planning for image guided preclinical radiotherapy

The work of this thesis advances techniques that improve the accuracy and versatility of preclinical radiation planning, to enable planning and delivery of more flexible and complex dose distributions for preclinical radiotherapy. Monte Carlo based radiation planning is introduced to achieve accurate dose calculation at the appropriate scale and photon energies used. Abeam-on time optimization framework is developed to achieve a higher degree of planning automation which is essential when moving to more complex beam delivery protocols. These techniques are extended by using multi angled irradiation with fixed beam shape and size,and subject translation during irradiation to enable more conformal dynamic target  irradiation. The developed methods are applied to enable localized irradiation for an orthotopic glioblastoma mouse model. All developed knowledge is rapidly distributed to research institutes worldwide through successful valorisation.

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