Emerging radiotherapy technologies and trends in nasopharyngeal cancer

Abstract

Technology has always driven advances in radiotherapy treatment. In this review, we describe the main technological advances in radiotherapy over the past decades for the treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) and highlight some of the pressing issues and challenges that remain. We aim to identify emerging trends in radiation medicine. These include advances in personalized medicine and advanced imaging modalities, standardization of planning and delineation, assessment of treatment response and adaptive re‐planning, impact of particle therapy, and role of artificial intelligence or automation in clinical care. In conclusion, we expect significant improvement in the therapeutic ratio of radiotherapy treatment for NPC over the next decade.

Immune Microenvironment Change and Involvement of Circular RNAs in TIL Cells of Recurrent Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

“…In recent years, surgery has gradually become one of the main modalities for the treatment of recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma (Liu et al, 2019. In turn, surgery can also have an impact on the immune status of the patient as well as the tumor microenvironment (Jiang et al, 2020;Tseng et al, 2020). Therefore the effect of surgery as a variable on the immune microenvironment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and whether circRNA plays an important function in this process.…”

Artificial intelligence for assisting cancer diagnosis and treatment in the era of precision medicine

“…As a result, treatment planning quality depends heavily on the experience of the clinical physicists. While automated planning using knowledge-based techniques, such as RapidPlan in Eclipse, have improved the consistency of planning quality [99,100], these methods are suboptimal since they cannot provide estimations of patient-specific achievable dose distributions. Recently, DL-based methods have become a promising approach for individualized 3D dose prediction and optimization [101][102][103][104].…”

An estimation of cost of concrete shielding in a radiotherapy room housing a clinical linear accelerator that produces high-energy photons

“…Ionizing radiations have several medical, scientific, and technological applications. Clinical linear accelerators (linacs) that produce high-energy photons play an important role in the radiation therapy of various types of cancer [SCARINGI, 2018;TSENG, 2020]. Advanced technologies and new treatment techniques contribute significantly to deliver high doses of radiation to the target volume while preserving the heathy structures.…”