Physics Research for Radiation Oncology

Overview

The Physics Division improves clinical outcomes by leading innovative research, development, and clinical application of imaging techniques, multimodality therapies, and computational methods while providing patients with the highest level of safety, efficiency, and accuracy of their treatments.

To learn about our research projects, publications, and member laboratories visit, please visit our website at https://gray.mgh.harvard.edu/.

Select areas of research include:

• Physical dose conformation - We explore and develop radiation treatment techniques for optimum physical dose conformation to the tumor target volume. Our efforts are focused on proton radiotherapy and advanced photon treatments, as well as on their comparison.
• Biological modeling - As a basis for treatment optimization we model the relationship between the dose distribution and the clinical outcome. Also, for proton radiotherapy we model the relative biological effectiveness.
• IMXT/IMPT - Intensity modulation is crucial both in photon radiotherapy (IMXT) and in proton radiotherapy (IMPT). In particular, we develop new IMPT methods.
• 4D - We develop concepts and methods to consider the time component in the whole radiotherapy chain, from imaging over planning and optimization to treatment delivery.
• Precision - To increase the precision of the dose application we develop new targeting techniques. To increase the accuracy of the dose prediction we perform Monte Carlo simulations.