Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

Our group has discovered that by combining ultrasound and microbubbles, the vasculature of tumors can be made exquisitely sensitive to radiation therapy. Therefore, this approach holds considerable promise for enhancing the effectiveness of radiation treatments. However, translating this basic discovery into a clinical system that can be used in a clinical environment on cancer patients requires the development of software that would treatment planning, in a manner that is done currently before a radiation treatment. The objective of this work is to translate to create software for treatment planning when using ultrasound and microbubbles in conjunction with radiation therapy. Moreover, more accurate mathematical models will be used to predict how the microbubbles interact with the ultrasound in order to increase the damage to the tumor vasculature.