Adaptive radiation therapy | Adaptive radiotherapy

What is adaptive radiotherapy?

Adaptive radiotherapy is an advanced technique that adjusts your treatment plan to match natural day-to-day changes in your body. Tumours and nearby organs can shift slightly due to breathing, digestion, or changes in your bladder or bowel. There are two ways this can be done: online adaptive radiotherapy, where your plan is updated during your appointment based on that day’s imaging, and offline adaptive radiotherapy, where your team reviews changes over several sessions and updates the plan for future treatments. Both approaches help target the cancer more precisely while reducing dose to healthy tissue and lowering the risk of side effects.

The benefits

Adaptive radiotherapy enhances your treatment by accounting for how your body naturally changes from day to day. By adjusting the plan to match these internal shifts, it supports more precise targeting of the tumour, improved protection for nearby healthy organs and lower risk of side effects. The technology also helps treatment sessions run more smoothly with fewer interruptions, creating a more comfortable, consistent, and personalised treatment experience.

How it works

Conventional radiotherapy relies on the body being positioned the same way each day, often requiring preparation such as bladder filling or supportive devices to help you remain still. Adaptive radiotherapy monitors your internal anatomy before, during, or between your treatment sessions. If anything has shifted, the system updates the treatment plan to match your anatomy on the day, helping ensure the radiation is delivered exactly where it’s needed.

Radformation technology

Radformation is advanced offline adaptive radiotherapy planning software that supports our clinical teams to deliver treatment with accuracy and consistency. It streamlines the many technical steps involved in designing and reviewing a radiotherapy plan, reducing delays and helping us maintain the highest safety standards throughout your course of care.

Radformation’s AI Contour helps our clinicians prepare treatment plans around the tumour up to 60% faster, which means patients can start treatment sooner and benefit from greater consistency in how their plans are created. We’ve also implemented Radformation’s Offline Adaptive Assessment to assess and update the plan throughout your treatment. This ensures we continue to target the tumour with pinpoint precision while minimising the dose to nearby organs and reducing potential side effects. Together, these technologies enhance accuracy, support clinical decision-making, and contribute to a smoother, more timely treatment experience.

Ethos radiotherapy

Varian Ethos™ radiotherapy is an online adaptive radiotherapy technology that uses artificial intelligence to tailor treatment to the unique shape or position of the body or organs during your treatment. The technology accounts for movements in internal or external anatomy during each treatment and allows your radiotherapy team to change the dose and delivery in real time with precision accuracy.

Artificial intelligence ensures radiotherapy treatment is delivered at a greater level of precision by limiting the dose to surrounding healthy tissue and reducing side effects. Ethos™ can efficiently deliver an entire personalised treatment in a typical 15-minute timeslot, compared with other solutions that can take more than 40 minutes due to manual reconfiguration.

Ethos™ therapy is available at Icon Cancer Centre Greenslopes.