Simultaneous control of the radiation therapy with heavy ions by positron emission tomography.

In December 1997 the treatment of patients suffering from head and neck tumours with beams of high-energy ¹²C ions started at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt. By the simultaneous application of positron emission tomography (PET) the treatments are verified in-situ during the irradiation. The PET-based quality assurance procedure is a chain of consecutive steps. The starting point is the three-dimensional treatment planning on the basis of X-ray computed tomograms (CT). During the heavy ion treatment the produced positron-emitter distribution is measured simultaneously. After that the expected temporal and spatial activity distribution is computed. Both images are reconstructed iteratively and filtered. For the analysis the PET and CT images are superimposed.