High precision small animal radiotherapy platform.

During the past decades, an enormous evolution took place in the field of radiation therapy, and irradiation beams can now be made to tailor - both in space and in time - the dose to the tumor while sparing healthy tissue to a high degree. However, this technological evolution in radiation therapy has actually been introduced in the clinic without solid pre-clinical research. As small animal radiotherapy still uses large volume radiation that by no means resembles clinical dose and volume distributions, its preclinical value can be questioned.

The aim of the current application is to implement an irradiation/imaging platform for small animals representative of what is currently used in the clinic. This platform will thus facilitate research and development in radiobiology, imaging and new radiotherapy techniques and as a consequence maximize the translatability of our results.

On top of this, this platform will allow the delivery of ablative radiation doses to sub-millimeter targets throughout the body without impacting the surrounding tissues. A small animal irradiation platform has thus much broader applications than purely radiation-oncological research (e.g. neurology).