Medical Imaging for Radiotherapy

Dear Colleagues,

Radiotherapy was born from radiological imaging more than one hundred years ago and evolved over the years to stop being a rib of radiodiagnostic but starring in cancer cure. However, most of the clinical workflow in radiation oncology is still tied to imaging. The target definition, usually delineated on a conventional CT scan, can often be integrated with multimodality imaging to identify cancer boundaries and a tumor’s proliferative heterogeneity or with dedicated technology to reduce uncertainties for organ motion. The second important step in the workflow is the physics planning calculation, a core based on imaging voxel information. Another step is the radiation dose delivery, guided by the imaging onboard the linear accelerators (IGRT) to assess the precision to hit the target and avoid healthy tissues. Then, at last, imaging is also used to evaluate the response at the end of the radiation treatment. Today, all these steps are undergoing frequent updates due to the highly flourishing research on medical imaging, physics, and radiotherapy. 

This Special Issue aims to offer the opportunity to all the researchers and clinicians involved in radiation oncology to publish scientific revisions of this changing world or present their early results from original and promising research on:

• Multiparametric or metabolic imaging (MRI, PET) for target definition or predicting the radiation response;
• Radiomics and radiotherapy;
• Treatment planning on synthetic CT images;
• Implementation and validation of automatic solutions for treatment planning;
• Deformable image registration (DIR): potential applications in radiotherapy;
• Target delineation with organ motion management via 4D CT or cine MRI;
• Image-Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT) by MRI or any advanced technique for organ motion control;
• Imaging and strategy for “Adaptive” radiotherapy, with or without re-planning;
• The best imaging to assess response to radiation.

Dr. Stefano Vagge
Dr. Michele Zeverino
Dr. Niccolò Giaj-Levra
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• IGRT
• adaptive radiotherapy
• radiomics
• MRI
• molecular imaging
• advanced radiotherapy
• 4DCT
• organ motion
• image reconstruction
• image registration
• automatic planning