Author Affiliations
Abstract
1 RMIT Centre for Additive Manufacture, School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
2 Physical Sciences Department, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia
3 ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre in Additive Biomanufacturing, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
4 Centre for Medical Radiation Physics, University of Wollongong, Wollongong Australia
The additive manufacturing (AM) process plays an important role in enabling cross-disciplinary research in engineering and personalised medicine. Commercially available clinical tools currently utilised in radiotherapy are typically based on traditional manufacturing processes, often leading to non-conformal geometries, time-consuming manufacturing process and high costs. An emerging application explores the design and development of patient-specific clinical tools using AM to optimise treatment outcomes among cancer patients receiving radiation therapy. In this review, we: 1)? highlight the key advantages of AM in radiotherapy where rapid prototyping allows for patient-specific manufacture 2) explore common clinical workflows involving radiotherapy tools such as bolus, compensators, anthropomorphic phantoms, immobilisers, and brachytherapy moulds; 3) investigate how current AM processes are exploited by researchers to achieve patient tissuelike imaging and dose attenuations. Finally, significant AM research opportunities in this space are highlighted for their future advancements in radiotherapy for diagnostic and clinical research applications.
additive manufacturing radiotherapy tools dosimetry EBRT patient-specific cancer treatment quality assurance International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing
2020, 2(1): 012003
