A patient-positioning system for synchrotron micro-beam radiotherapy (MRT)

Fixed beam radiotherapy has long been a feature of ion therapy centres that require either a synchrotron or cyclotron to generate their radiation beam. Microbeam Radiation Therapy (MRT), a pre-clinical radiotherapy technique, also finds itself limited to use in a fixed beam synchrotron facility. The Imaging and Medical Beamline (IMBL) at the Australian Synchrotron is deeply invested in MRT studies and requires an image guidance system to enable Image Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT) treatments in their ongoing small animal studies and upcoming large animal studies. This thesis aims to create an image guidance system that both meets the needs of the IMBL MRT programme, and aligns itself with international standards and clinical practices in IGRT. This thesis successfully provides a set of protocols and an IGRT system that have been used in several IGRT studies on the IMBL. SyncMRT, the IGRT system, was first tested in Hutch 2B on the IMBL, where the image-guided positioning of an alignment phantom achieved an accuracy of 0.49mm±0.16mm using fiducial markers. The successful phantom irradations led to the use of SyncMRT in two small animal studies, where the image-guided positioning of rats delivered accuracies of 0.33mm±0.02mm using bony anatomy. The work presented in this thesis has been shown to align with international standards, and achieve alignment accuracies comparable to that which is observed in daily clinical practice. SyncMRT and the IGRT protocols have been developed in such a way that they can be expanded to support the future needs of radiotherapy studies on IMBL. SyncMRT is not limited to use on the IMBL, but can be used in any fixed beam facility conducting preclinical radiotherapy studies. Finally, this work paves the way for future large animal studies on IMBL, and one day, human trials