Special procedures and techniques in radiotherapy

In addition to the routine conventional radiotherapy techniques used in standard radiotherapy departments and clinics, several specialized techniques are known and used for special procedures, be it in dose delivery or target localization. These techniques deal with specific problems that usually require equipment modifications, special quality assurance procedures and heavy involvement and support from clinical physicists. Owing to their increased complexity, these specialized techniques are usually available only in larger, regional centres. The radiotherapy techniques that currently fall into the specialized category are listed below; the first six are special dose delivery techniques, the last three are special target localization techniques: Stereotactic irradiation; Total body irradiation (TBI) with photon beams; Total skin electron irradiation (TSEI); Intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT); Endorectal irradiation; Conformal radiotherapy and intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT); Image guided radiotherapy (IGRT); Respiratory gated radiotherapy; Positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) fused images