A joint team of researchers from Radiation Oncology at Dartmouth’s and Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center (NCCC), Dartmouth Engineering, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Department of Surgery have developed a method to convert a standard linear accelerator (LINAC), used for delivery of radiation therapy cancer treatment, to a FLASH ultra-high-dose rate radiation therapy beam. The work, entitled “Electron FLASH Delivery at Treatment Room Isocenter for Efficient Reversible Conversion of a Clinical LINAC,” is newly published online in
International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology & Physics.
The exceptionally high dose rate is 3,000 times higher than normal therapy treatment (300 Gray per second vs. 0.1 Gray per second, Gray being a standard unit measuring absorbed radiation). Instead of treatment over 20 seconds, an entire treatment is completed in 6 milliseconds, giving the therapy its nickname, “FLASH.” “These high dose rates have been shown to pro