Our studies are focused on bringing forth the optimal proton therapy for cancer patients.
Proton therapy is a cancer treatment with hydrogen nuclei (hydrogen atoms with electrons removed) accelerated at about 70% of the speed of light and irradiated towards the diseased target volume. The features of this treatment include that a cancer can be destroyed with the pin-point precision, and therefore, the damages on the normal tissues can be limited as minimum.
Our research involves developing treatment plans and irradiation technology with both positional and temporal precisions, so that the positive outcomes of the proton therapy will increase. When the proton beams are precisely irradiated onto the planning target volume, you will be able to expect bigger therapeutic effects and smaller side effects.
We also study on developing more effective radiotherapy than ever, one of which can be the combined therapy of the proton therapy and the X-ray radiation therapy.
Our studies involve developing a measurement tool to assess complicated irradiation methods and their optimal conditions for difficult cases, which include craniospinal irradiation, breath-synchronized irradiation on or near diaphragm and irradiation onto the area near self-contained metal medical appliance. The measurement tool will also be useful for improving irradiation precisions.
Currently we are trying to assess the effects of combined radiotherapy of proton and photon beams. By combining these two, it will be possible to provide an effective cancer therapy while limiting the damages on surrounding healthy tissues as minimum. We are studying on the optimal ways to provide the combined radiotherapy.
In order to assess the therapeutic effects of the proton and radiation therapy, it will be required to take positional information about the target volume with the surrounding area, as well as temporal information including body movement and deformation around the target, into consideration. Therefore, we study on acquiring accurate temporal information with the 4-dimentional CT, the adaptive planning functions and the deformable image registration aiming at improvement of total precisions of the treatment plans.
