Bas Raaymakers

Bas Raaymakers is working to improve cancer therapy by investigating, as well as developing, new high precision radiotherapy.
Together with prof Jan Lagendijk but also with industrial partners Elekta and Philips he designed and built a hybrid MRI accelerator to facilitate high precision, soft-tissue based image guidance for radiotherapy. This enables better radiotherapy via dose escalation while decreasing toxicity.
At the same time, the translation of this new technology to the clinic is pursued. For instance fast, on-line treatment planning, so that the patient is treated based on the latest state of the anatomy. This improves the current radiotherapy practice and at the same time is a requirement for smooth clinical introduction of the MRI accelerator.
Clinical work flow and procedures for different tumour sites are under investigation. Two major categories can be distinguished: The first is improving the existing radiotherapy patient treatments, so better conform the dose distribution to the tumour shape to minimise harm to the surroundings. The second is enabling radiotherapy as an alternative for surgery for patients currently not eligible for radiotherapy, e.g. highly mobile tumours in the kidney. The motion is too large to safely administer dose with conventional radiotherapy technology, with the on-line MRI guidance the motion uncertainty can be mitigated and radiation can be safely administered, offering a completely non-invasive treatment.