ENVISION Project

Hadrontherapy is a highly advanced technique of cancer radiotherapy that uses beams of charged particles (ions) to destroy tumour cells. While conventional X-rays traverse the human body depositing radiation as they pass through, ions deliver most of their energy at one point. Hadrontherapy is most advantageous once the position of the tumour is accurately known, so that healthy tissues can be protected. Accurate positioning is a crucial challenge for targeting moving organs, as in lung cancer, and for adapting the irradiation as the tumour shrinks with treatment. Therefore, quality assurance becomes one of the most relevant issues for an effective outcome of the cancer treatment. In order to improve the quality assurance tools for hadrontherapy, the European Commission is funding ENVISION, a 4-year project that aims at developing solutions for: real-• time non invasive monitoring • quantitative imaging • precise determination of delivered dose • fast feedback for optimal treatment planning • real-time response to moving organs • simulation studies Launched in February 2010, ENVISION is a collaboration of sixteen leading European research centres and industrial partners, coordinated by CERN.