| 1. |
- Daşu, Alexandru, et al.
(författare)
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The use of risk estimation models for the induction of secondary cancers following radiotherapy
- 2005
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Ingår i: Acta Oncologica. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0284-186X .- 1651-226X. ; 44:4, s. 339-347
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Theoretical predictions of cancer risk from radiotherapy may be used as a complementary criterion for the selection of successful treatment plans together with the classical approach of estimating the possible deterministic effects. However, any such attempts must take into consideration the specific features of radiation treatment. This paper explores several possible methods for estimating the risk of cancer following radiotherapy in order to investigate the influences of the fractionation and the non-uniformity of the dose to the irradiated organ. The results indicate that dose inhomogeneity plays an important role in predicting the risk for secondary cancer and therefore for predictive purposes it must be taken into account through the use of the dose volume histograms. They also suggest that the competition between cell killing and the induction of carcinogenic mutations has to be taken into consideration for more realistic risk estimations. Furthermore, more realistic parameters could be obtained if this competition is also included in analyses of epidemiological data from radiotherapy applications.
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| 2. |
- Daşu, Alexandru, et al.
(författare)
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Dose-effect models for risk - relationship to cell survival parameters
- 2005
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Ingår i: Acta Oncologica. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0284-186X .- 1651-226X. ; 44:8, s. 829-835
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is an increased interest in estimating the induction of cancers following radiotherapy as the patients have nowadays a much longer life expectancy following the treatment. Clinical investigations have shown that the dose response relationship for cancer induction following radiotherapy has either of two main characteristics: an increase of the risk with dose to a maximum effect followed by a decrease or an increase followed by a levelling-off of the risk. While these behaviours have been described qualitatively, there is no mathematical model that can explain both of them on mechanistic terms. This paper investigates the relationship between the shape of the dose-effect curve and the cell survival parameters of a single risk model. Dose response relationships were described with a competition model which takes into account the probability to induce DNA mutations and the probability of cell survival after irradiation. The shape of the curves was analysed in relation to the parameters that have been used to obtain them. It was found that the two main appearances of clinical data for the induction of secondary cancer following radiotherapy could be the manifestations of the particular sets of parameters that describe the induction of mutations and cell kill for fractionated irradiations. Thus, the levelling off appearance of the dose response curve could be either a sign of moderate to high inducible repair effect in cell survival (but weak for DNA mutations) or the effect of heterogeneity, or both. The bell-shaped appearance encompasses all the other cases. The results also stress the importance of taking into account the details of the clinical delivery of dose in radiotherapy, mainly the fractionated character, as the findings of our study did not appear for single dose models. The results thus indicate that the shapes of clinically observed dose response curves for the induction of secondary cancers can be described by using one single competition model. It was also found that data for cancer induction may be linked to in vivo cell survival parameters that may be used for other modelling applications.
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| 3. |
- Daşu, Alexandru, et al.
(författare)
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In response to Dr. Karger et al.
- 2008
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Ingår i: International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0360-3016 .- 1879-355X. ; 70:5, s. 1614-1615
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
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| 4. |
- Daşu, Alexandru, et al.
(författare)
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The effects of hypoxia on the theoretical modelling of tumour control probability
- 2005
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Ingår i: Acta Oncologica. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0284-186X .- 1651-226X. ; 44:6, s. 563-571
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Theoretical modelling of tumour response is increasingly used for the prediction of treatment result and has even been proposed as ranking criteria in some algorithms for treatment planning. Tumour response to radiation is greatly influenced by the details of tumour microenvironment, especially hypoxia, that unfortunately are not always taken into consideration for these simulations. This paper intends to investigate the effects of various assumptions regarding hypoxia distribution in tumours on the predictions of treatment outcome. A previously developed model for simulating theoretically the oxygenation in biologically relevant tissues, including results from oxygen diffusion, consumption and perfusion limitations in tumours, was used to investigate the effects of the different aspects of hypoxia on the predictions of treatment outcome. Thus, both the continuous distribution of values and the temporal variation of hypoxia patterns were taken into consideration and were compared with a 'black-and-white' simplification with a fully hypoxic compartment and a fully oxic one. It was found that the full distribution of oxygenation in the tissue is needed for accurate results. The 'black-and-white' simplification, while showing the same general trends for the predictions of radiation response, could lead to serious over-estimations of the tumour control probability. It was also found that the presence of some hypoxia for every treatment fraction leads to a decrease in the predicted local control, regardless of the change of the hypoxic pattern throughout the duration of the whole treatment. The results thus suggest that the assumptions regarding tumour hypoxia influence very much the predictions of treatment outcome and therefore they have to be very carefully incorporated into the theoretical modelling.
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| 5. |
- Daşu, Alexandru, et al.
(författare)
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The relationship between vascular oxygen distribution and tissue oxygenation
- 2009
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Ingår i: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. - Boston, MA : Springer US. - 0065-2598 .- 2214-8019. ; 645, s. 255-260
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Tumour oxygenation could be investigated through several methods that use various measuring principles and can therefore highlight its different aspects. The results have to be subsequently correlated, but this might not be straightforward due to intrinsic limitations of the measurement methods. This study describes an analysis of the relationship between vascular and tissue oxygenations that may help the interpretation of results. Simulations have been performed with a mathematical model that calculates the tissue oxygenation for complex vascular arrangements by taking into consideration the oxygen diffusion into the tissue and its consumption at the cells. The results showed that while vascular and tissue oxygenations are deterministically related, the relationship between them is not unequivocal and this could lead to uncertainties when attempting to correlate them. However, theoretical simulation could bridge the gap between the results obtained with various methods.
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| 6. |
- Dasu, Alexandru, et al.
(författare)
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The risk for secondary cancers in patients treated for prostate carcinoma – An analysis with the competition dose response model
- 2009
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Ingår i: IFMBE Proceedings. - Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin Heidelberg. - 1680-0737 .- 1433-9277. ; 25/III, s. 237-240
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The risk for radiation-induced cancers has become increasingly important as patient survival following radiotherapy has increased due to the advent of new methods for early detection and advanced treatment. Attempts have been made to quantify the risk of cancer that may be associated with various treatment approaches, but the accuracy of predictions is rather low due to the influence of many confounding factors. It is the aim of this paper to investigate the impact of dose heterogeneity and inter-patient anatomical heterogeneity that may be encountered in a population of patients undergoing radiotherapy and are thought to influence risk predictions. Dose volume histograms from patients treated with radiation for the carcinoma of the prostate have been used to calculate the risk for secondary malignancies using a competition dose-response model previously developed. Biologically-relevant parameters derived from clinical and experimental data have been used for the model. The results suggested that dose heterogeneity plays an important role in predicting the risk for secondary cancer and that it should be taken into account through the use of dose volume histograms. Consequently, dose-response relationships derived for uniform relationships should be used with care to predict the risk for secondary malignancies in heterogeneously irradiated tissues. Inter-patient differences could lead to considerable uncertainties in the shape of the relationship between predicted risk and average tissue dose, as seen in epidemiological studies. They also lead to rather weak correlations between the risk for secondary malignancies and target volumes. The results stress the importance of taking into account the details of the clinical delivery of dose in radiotherapy for treatment plan evaluation or for retrospective analyses of the induction of secondary cancers. Nevertheless, the levels of risks are generally low and they could be regarded as the price of success for the advances in the radiotherapy of the prostate.
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| 7. |
- Daşu, Alexandru, et al.
(författare)
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Theoretical simulation of tumour oxygenation--practical applications
- 2006
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Ingår i: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. - : Springer US. - 0065-2598 .- 2214-8019. ; 578, s. 357-362
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Theoretical simulation of tissue oxygenation is a robust method that can be used to quantify the tissue oxygenation for a variety of applications. However, it is necessary that the relevant input parameters are used for the model describing the tumour microenvironment. The results of the simulations presented in this article suggest that the accuracy of the simulations depends very much on the method of calculation of the effects of the temporal change of the hypoxic pattern due to the opening and the closure of blood vessels. Thus, the use of average oxygenations might lead to dangerous overestimations of the treatment response. This indicates that care should be taken when incorporating hypoxia information into the biological modelling of tumour response.
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| 8. |
- Toma-Dasu, Iuliana, et al.
(författare)
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Conversion of polarographic electrode measurements--a computer based approach
- 2005
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : IOP Publishing. - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 50:19, s. 4581-4591
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The polarographic measurement of tissue oxygenation is one of the most widely used methods in clinical practice for the quantification of tumour hypoxia. However, due to the particular features of the electrode measuring process, the results of the measurements do not accurately reflect the tumour oxygenation. This study aimed to find a correlation between the electrode measurements and the tumour oxygenation in an attempt to improve the accuracy of the predictions regarding the response to treatment based on electrode measurements. A previously developed computer model that allows the simulation of tumour tissue and electrode measurements was used. The oxygenation of a large number of tumours with biologically relevant distributions of blood vessels was theoretically calculated. Simulations of electrode measurements allowed the comparison between the real tissue oxygenation and the results obtained with the electrode. A semi-empirical relationship between the hypoxic fraction measured by the electrode and the real hypoxic fraction in the tissue has been found. The impact of the correction of the electrode measurements in terms of predictions for tumour control probability was estimated for a few clinical examples. The range of possible true values corresponding to one measurement has also proven useful for explaining the apparently unexpected response to the treatment of some patients. The corrected hypoxic fraction which is believed to be closer to the real value of tissue hypoxia predicts much smaller control probabilities than the raw electrode measurements. This could provide an explanation for the apparently unexpected failure to respond to the treatment of some of the patients with apparently favourable tumour oxygenation. This also means that the electrode measurements cannot be used directly for the quantitative modelling of tumour response to the treatment. The conversion method proposed in this paper might however strengthen the statistical power of the correlations between the electrode measurements and the treatment outcome.
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| 9. |
- Toma-Dasu, Iuliana, et al.
(författare)
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Dose prescription and optimisation based on tumour hypoxia
- 2009
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Ingår i: Acta Oncologica. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0284-186X .- 1651-226X. ; 48:8, s. 1181-1192
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction. Tumour hypoxia is an important factor that confers radioresistance to the affected cells and could thus decrease the tumour response to radiotherapy. The development of advanced imaging methods that quantify both the extent and the spatial distribution of the hypoxic regions has created the premises to devise therapies that target the hypoxic regions in the tumour. Materials and methods. The present study proposes an original method to prescribe objectively dose distributions that focus the radiation dose to the radioresistant tumour regions and could therefore spare adjacent normal tissues. The effectiveness of the method was tested for clinically relevant simulations of tumour hypoxia that take into consideration dynamics and heterogeneity of oxygenation. Results and discussion. The results have shown that highly heterogeneous dose distributions may lead to significant improvements of the outcome only for static oxygenations. In contrast, the proposed method that involves the segmentation of the dose distributions and the optimisation of the dose prescribed to each segment to account for local heterogeneity may lead to significantly improved local control for clinically-relevant patterns of oxygenation. The clinical applicability of the method is warranted by its relatively easy adaptation to functional imaging of tumour hypoxia obtained with markers with known uptake properties.
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| 10. |
- Toma-Dasu, Iuliana, et al.
(författare)
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Influence of acute tumour hypoxia on radiation therapy outcome
- 2005
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Ingår i: AAPM Symposium Proceedings No. 14: Physical, Chemical and Biological Targeting in Radiation Oncology. - Madison, Wisconsin : Medical Physics Publishing. - 9781888340532 ; , s. 111-117
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- One of the most important factors that influence the outcome of cancer treatment is tumor hypoxia that is caused by a deficient vascular network and an increased interstitial pressure. Tumor hypoxia can be divided into two types depending on the underlying mechanism. Thus, chronic hypoxia is caused mainly by the limited diffusion of oxygen into tissue due to cellular consumption and might also be influenced by a high interstitial pressure, and changes very slowly in time. Acute hypoxia might also appear in tumors due to transient perfusion-related events such as the temporary closure of blood vessels and has a finite lifetime ranging from minutes to hours. The temporal variation of acute hypoxia influences the treatment outcome in a more complex way than the chronic hypoxia. The aim of this study is to simulate the influences of various amounts of acute hypoxia on the treatment outcome. The present model for tumor oxygenation allows the simulation of the two forms of tumor hypoxia. We have studied the reduced tumor oxygenations resulting from the temporary shutting down of a given fraction of tumor blood vessels at every radiation fraction throughout the treatment. The particular effect of acute hypoxia on the treatment outcome was evaluated by calculating the effective tumor control probability with or without acute hypoxia. The results suggest that the presence of acute hypoxia during every treatment fraction reduces the tumor control probability significantly. As consequence, higher and higher doses are needed to achieve a certain level of local control in tumors when the fraction of closed vessels increases. These results therefore show that acute hypoxia has to be taken into consideration for accurate simulations of radiation treatments and that an individual approach for each patient might be desirable for maximum improvement of outcome.
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