Les progrès de la radiothérapie dans la prise en charge des cancers bronchiques

In their last 15 years advances in computers have allowed parallel advances in imaging technologies. The improvements in imaging have in turn resulted in a higher level of complexity being incorporated into radiotherapy treatment planning systems. As a result of these changes, the delivery of radiotherapy has evolved from therapy designed on two dimensional X-ray images and hand calculations to three dimensional X-ray based images from computerized tomography (CT), incorporating increasingly complex computer algorithms leading to intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The incorporation of multimodality imaging (PET-FDG) is used increasingly for radiotherapy planning. In addition, greater awareness of the challenges to the accuracy of the treatment planning process, such as problems with set-up error and organ movement, have begun to be addressed systematically, ushering in an era of so-called Four-Dimensional Radiotherapy.