[Respiratory gating for radiotherapy: main technical aspects and clinical benefits]

Respiration-gated radiotherapy offers a significant potential for improvement in the irradiation of tumor sites affected by respiratory motion such as lung, breast and liver tumors. An increased conformality of irradiation fields leading to decreased complications rates of organs at risk (lung, heart...) is expected. Reduction of respiratory motion can be achieved by using either respiration synchronized gating techniques or breath hold techniques. This work describes the different techniques, gives an overview of the literature and results of the STIC 2003 project.