Research & Development - (by Professor Andrew Beavis)

The main theme to our Service Development and Research work over the last five years has been Conformal therapy leading to an implementation of Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) in Jan 2002. Our continuing work is motivated by the necessity of providing Image Guided therapy in order to provide highly conformal treatments.

We continue to build our academic activities: most staff in the group lecture on courses run in the Trust and at the university. We are also involved with the teaching activities on the Sheffield-Hallam University Therapy Radiographer degrees at both Under and Post-Graduate level. A strong network of academic departments exists within the University of Hull. We have many collaborations enabling us to have active projects in Gel Dosimetry (development of Gels and an Optical CT scanner), identification and delineation of tumour sites using novel MRI techniques, image processing. These departments include Applied Physics (www.physics.hull.ac.uk) , Chemistry, Computer Science (www.dcs.hull.ac.uk/simmod) , Radiology (www.hull.ac.uk/mri)  and Medical Oncology and Psychology (www.hull.ac.uk/instrehab) . The success of this network of groups has led to (on-going) discussions regarding formalising its existence and activity further at the University. There are have five PhD students (2003) working on projects managed in conjunction with the University departments of Radiology, Physical Sciences and Computer science

We hold two grants that fund work and personnel within the group and are actively seeking to expand our existing portfolio by securing further funding. A participation with an European consortium exists with the aim of securing a Framework 6 network grant. A study into the application and benefit of advanced MRI techniques in the planning and follow-up of IMRT for Head and Neck cancers has been funded by Yorkshire Cancer Research. IMRT delivery methodologies are being investigated that are more optimal and appropriate for the optimisation schemes under investigation by our and other groups, this work is funded by Computerised Medical Systems (CMS).

Other commercially sponsored projects includes developmental work on the HORUS product from QADOS (www.QADOS.co.uk). This is a camera based patient contouring and position verification tool, the collaboration involves our clinical department, the Computing Science visualisation group and QADOS. This project was born out of ongoing work with the Computing Science group investigating novel immersive 3D visualisation applications for Radiotherapy. We have access to the Hull Immersive Visualisation Environment, HIVE (www.hive.hull.ac.uk) at the Univeristy and have developed desk top environments for 3d conformal therapy treatment planning applications. This work is under active expansion in order to provide novel training tools and educational aids.

We have collaborated extensively with other departments in the past and have active collaborations with departments such as Stanford University (Lei Xing), the Mallinckrodt Radiology (Daniel Low) department and University of Wisconsin (Rock Mackie) in the US. We work closely with CMS and Varian, being a reference site for both companies. Currently, collaborative work with Dr. Mark Wiessmeyer (CMS) continues in the investigation and development of optimisation schemes for IMRT treatments including the direct use of biological data from multi-modality imaging sources.

We have a local Phase I dose escalation study progressing in Stage III Inoperable Pancreatic cancers. This Radio-Chemotherapy trial is jointly performed with the Academic Medical Oncology group, who boast a 'trials support office' who are active in providing help for our study. Radiation dose and Chemotherapy dose (5FU) are escalated in an attempt to establish the ceiling doses in this multi-modality treatment. We aim to investigate further such multi-modality treatments in the future and expand our methodologies for collection of data allowing outcome analysis as we continue to develop our conformal therapy/ IMRT techniques.

Our work has been published and extensively presented at major national conferences such as the IPEM and Radiology, international meetings such as AAPM, ASTRO, ESTRO annual conferences and other high profile meetings such as ICCR and the 3rd Japanese Takahashi memorial conformal therapy conference. A list of publications, abstracts and published conference papers are given below.

Our aim is to provide an environment where clinical excellence and academic flair are encouraged and fostered to enable each member of staff to develop their own interests whilst developing a platform from which the group can grow and develop.