Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy – IMRT

Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute & Research Centre boasts of being  the first cancer centre in the country to put IMRT into clinical practice.

Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) is an approach that delivers a high, conformal dose to the tumor while restricting the exposure to surrounding normal tissue.

The benefits of IMRT

The benefits of IMRT include:

• IMRT delivers higher doses of radiation for destroying the tumor, regardless of size, shape or location, thus enabling a higher chance of cure.
• IMRT uses computer-generated images to plan and delivers tightly focused radiation beams, thereby sparing surrounding healthy tissue. Hence side effects are minimized.
• IMRT may make re-treatment with radiation possible, since healthy tissue initially received less radiation than with conventional therapy. The radiation beams are planned to avoid critical structures.
• IMRT brings the advantages of radiation therapy to a wider range of cancer patients, including patients with difficult-to-reach tumors or tumors located close to vital organs.

IMRT uses multiple small radiation beam lets of varying intensities to precisely conform to a tumor. The radiation intensity of each beam is controlled, and the beam shape changes throughout each treatment using multi leaf collimators, allowing a relatively uniform dose to the tumor and a sharp fall-off of the dose to surrounding normal organs.