Program to set national standards to reduce radiotherapy accidents

A new program to develop the next generation of national standards of radiotherapy treatment hopes to reduce radiotherapy accidents over the next 30 years.

Swinburne University of Technology, CSIRO and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) are jointly developing this new set of primary standards that will be used to assess the performance of new radiotherapy techniques and cross-check each hospital’s unit devices to directly impact clinical practice at the national level.

The program aims to minimise both under-dosing and over-dosing radiotherapy treatments — these measures are expected to play a crucial role in safeguarding patient health and improving health outcomes.

Swinburne project lead Associate Professor Jeremy Brown is part of the team that will design, develop and commission these primary dosimetry standards in line with federal regulatory guidelines. “Our cross-disciplinary approach will leverage both experimental and computational methods to deliver a set of standards that ensure the quality of healthcare-delivered cancer treatment in Australia,” Brown said.

ARPANSA’s Dr Duncan Butler said the standards will improve the accuracy of radiation measurements in Australia and support new types of radiotherapy, such as protons and high dose-rate techniques.

“This work makes an important contribution to ARPANSA’s efforts to support patient safety.”

The project will see Swinburne, CSIRO and ARPANSA collaborating to bring together their strengths in physics, medicine and technology. The team aims to use this research project’s success to establish a leading Australian program and seek government- and industry-sponsored funding to develop additional advanced dosimetry tools to support the deployment of new radiotherapy modalities within Australia.

“External beam radiotherapy is one of the most popular approaches in the treatment of cancer in Australia. It is crucial that our team and governing bodies continue to work towards the most optimal radiotherapy treatment possible,” Brown said.

This research has been funded by the CSIRO Industry PhD Program (iPhD), which is a collaboration between CSIRO, Swinburne University and ARPANSA. The CSIRO iPhD Program is part of the federal government’s University Research Commercialisation Action Plan.

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