Research column 3: Medical Applications of Ionising Radiation
The third column of the research engagements of the DRS is strongly associated with the new strategic topic of the Helmholtz Zentrum München: “Personalized Medicine”. The activities are key to this research area:
- Small Molecule Discovery for Personalized Radiation Therapy
- Physics Based Optimisation in Radiation Diagnostics and Therapy
- Personalized Risk/Benefit Analysis for Medical Radiation Applications
- Markers for Radiation Therapy
Examples of research topics in this field:
Optimisation in Nuclear Medicine
In nuclear medicine, radioactively labeled molecules (radiopharmaceuticals) are administered to patients for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. The investigation of the time-dependent distribution of these radiopharmaceuticals and the corresponding model development permits to optimise the administered dose in view of the respective application.
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Development of Tomographic Imaging
CT examinations cause more than half of the medical collective dose in Germany, even though the number of examinations is relatively low in comparison to other modalities. The optimisation of tomographic imaging therefore has a large potential for dose reduction.
DRS research aims at evolving CT jointly in several aspects – technical development and tests of new imaging geometries as well as the implementation of corresponding reconstruction algorithms for the image data.
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Radiation transport calculations
The use of a human voxel phantom family allows calculating dose estimates for various medical applications. These dose estimates can be personalised, since the voxel models can be adapted to individual physical parameters such as height and amount of body fat.
The implementation of high-resolution hybrid voxel models, e.g. for lung and breast, further permits to realistically simulate medical imaging-related topics.
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Determining biomarkers and modifying target cells for improved radiation therapy
By using novel organic polymer and semiconductor sensors we want develop assays for the realtime detection of resilient endpoint marker in cellular systems after low dose irradiation.
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Personalised risk benefit optimisation for medical radiation application
We develop an assay for retrospective determination of possible DNA and protein endpoints after low dose irradiation.
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Radiation sensitivity of tumour cells
Research is focused on the identification of biomarkers of radiation sensitivity in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma (HNSCC) that are thought to account for variable responses to radiation therapy. This can lead to therapy failure, which is a main reason for the unfavourable 5-year survival rate of HNSCC. Data from different molecular levels (genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic) are analysed using an integrative approach in order to discover deregulated pathways and biomarkers associated with radiation resistance of HNSCC. The identification of reliable biomarkers predicting radiation resistance and radiation sensitivity of tumour cells will lead to more personalised therapeutic approaches will thereby improve clinical treatment of HNSCC.
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