Radiotherapy physics provides a comprehensive physics service to the Addenbrooke’s radiotherapy centre ensuring the safe and accurate use of high dose ionising radiation to treat patients with cancer, whilst maintaining a safe environment for other patients, visitors and staff.
Physicists, technicians and radiographers work closely with oncology staff to provide a wide range of scientific and technical advice and support for all radiotherapy treatments.
Routine clinical work includes radiotherapy treatment planning and related dosimetry, the provision of brachytherapy, and the manufacture of immobilisation and shielding equipment for patients.
Extensive support is provided to radiotherapy equipment. This incorporates the design of facilities; the management of computer systems, the design and management of software; and the commissioning, servicing and quality control of linear accelerators, orthovoltage units, brachytherapy units and CT scanners.
All our work and related dosimetry are monitored and assured to nationally and internationally agreed specifications and legal requirements. We are involved in research and development in radiotherapy physics, and have had PhD students from the University of Cambridge based in our department.
We are also responsible for providing radiotherapy physics advice and support to two University Departments (Veterinary Medicine and Pathology).
Radiotherapy Dosimetry and Technical Support
We support the following equipment at Addenbrooke's: 3 Elekta Agility (6MV + 10MV +electrons ) 1 Elekta Agility (6MV +electrons ) 2 Radixact (TomoTherapy) machines 2 Varian True-Beam (6MV, 6MV-FFF, 10MV, 10MV-FFF) 2 Canon (Toshiba) wide-bore CT scanners Exactrac imaging system we also support a Varian Clinac 1800C at the Vet school.
Contact: Email Nicola Twyman
Treatment planning
A team of dosimetrists and physicists provide a comprehensive radiotherapy planning service.
Planning systems in use at Addenbrooke's include: Raystation Precision (TomoTherapy) BrainLab Elements ProSoma.
Contact: Email Hannah Chantler
Brachytherapy
We provide physics support to brachytherapy treatments for patients with gynaecological and prostate cancer.
Systems in use include: Nucletron HDR brachytherapy Nucletron Seed Selectron Various Nucletron Brachy planning systems.
Contact: Email Diane Whitney
Radiotherapy Computing
We provide support for the computing systems in use in Radiotherapy, including MOSAIQ, and all the planning systems and therapy equipment listed above.
We develop in-house software, including applications developed in MATLAB, and scripts for Raystation developed in Python.
Contact: Email Dr Andrew Hoole
Technique Development
We support the development of new techniques in radiotherapy, including stereotactic radiosurgery.
We provide physics support to radiotherapy clinical trials.