Optimizing the clinical integration of a high dose rate brachytherapy program for the focal treatment of prostate cancer
Summary
Each year, 4600 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed in Quebec and 890 men die because of it. Several treatment options are available, including brachytherapy which is a branch of radiotherapy designed to insert a radioactive source into the tumor to deliver local treatment while minimizing the dose to surrounding healthy organs. Patients with prostate cancer are regularly over-dosed or under-dosed when conventional radiotherapy practice is followed. The overall goal of the project is to improve the quality of care provided to our prostate cancer patients treated with high dose rate brachytherapy, while reducing the standard duration of a treatment session and increasing the accuracy in the delivery of this treatment. The new clinical program aims to attack the tumor in a targeted way rather than to treat the entire prostate. The innovative aspects of the technique thus implanted in a real care environment will be; 1. focal prostatic brachytherapy with optimized identification of target volumes and precise delivery of the radiation dose, 2 personalized tumor mapping by MRI multiparametric analysis for the prostate, 3. integration of PET-PSMA (new nuclear medicine radiotracer) into the clinical and decision-making processes. The objective of the current grant proposal is to automate, validate and integrate these different systems in order to make the optimal technique available to our Quebec clinics and ready for a large-scale clinical study.