Clinical Implications of New Innovations in Radiation Treatment Delivery

The practice of radiation therapy involves accurately defining the target and precisely delivering the treatment. The end result is to maximize dose to the tumor and minimize dose to surrounding tissue. Many technical innovations in the delivery of radiation have been developed over the past few years. These developments essentially increase the precision of radiation delivery, but do not directly address the accuracy of target definition. These technical innovations can be broadly thought of as accomplishing two goals: first, to increase the reproducibility of patient setup, and second, to improve the dose homogeneity. The clinical implementation, concerns, and utility of these innovations are discussed.