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Postgraduate and honours research projects - RadiotherapyPostgraduate Projects in Synchrotron Microbeam Radiation Therapy (MRT)
Professor Rob Lewis (MCSS), Professor Peter Rogers (Monash Institute of Medical Research) Synchrotron generated microbeams offer the potential to develop more effective radiotherapy treatments for certain cancers. Research using Synchrotron microbeam techniques has shown it is possible for animals to tolerate X-ray doses 100 times greater than is possible with conventional methods. Moreover, it has been shown that tumours are destroyed unlike the normal tissue and the survival time of the animals is increased significantly. The synchrotron allows an array of microbeams to be delivered at very high doses to tissue in a very short time period. The radiation dose is spatially fractionated, that is, the beam is split or segmented into an array of uniform microbeams by a multislit collimator. The width of such microbeams is of the order of 30 microns. The distance between adjacent microbeams is of the order of 200 microns. Such a technique is not feasible with conventional radiotherapy X-ray machines in a hospital setting. Physics-based and Biology-based projects are on offer to suitably motivated candidates. The Physics-based projects are largely concerned with dosimetric measurements and simulations of the absorbed dose distribution. Biology-based projects involve the use of cellular and molecular techniques on in-vivo (mouse) and in-vitro samples to better understand the underlying radiobiology of MRT. The Australian-based MRT project is a collaboration between Prof. Rob Lewis, Director of the Monash Centre for Synchrotron Science, Prof Peter Rogers from the Centre for Women’s Health Research at the Monash Institute of Medical Research, Dr. Imants Svalbe and Mr. Jeffrey Crosbie from the School of Physics at Monash University. We also have collaborations with other Australian and overseas institutes. Our group have generated novel data from numerous field trips to the SPring-8 synchrotron in Japan. We plan to transfer radiotherapy experiments to the medical beamline of the Australian Synchrotron in 2009. For further information please contact:
Professor Peter Rogers
Dr Imants Svalbe |