Month: November 2018

Blasting radiation therapy into the future: New systems may improve cancer treatment

Image by Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

As a cancer survivor, I know radiation therapy lasting minutes can seem much longer as you lie on the patient bed trying not to move. Future accelerator technology may turn these dreaded minutes into a fraction of a second due to new funding.

Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are teaming up to develop a faster and more precise way to deliver X-rays or protons, quickly zapping cancer cells before their surrounding organs can move. This will likely reduce treatment side effects by minimizing damage to healthy tissue.

“Delivering the radiation dose of an entire therapy session with a single flash lasting less than a second would be the ultimate way of managing the constant motion of organs and tissues, and a major advance compared with methods we’re using today,” said Billy Loo, MD, PhD, an associate professor of radiation oncology at Stanford, in a recent SLAC news release.

Currently, most radiation therapy systems work by accelerating electrons through a meter-long tube using radiofrequency fields that travel in the same direction. These electrons then collide with a heavy metal target to convert their energy into high energy X-rays, which are sharply focused and delivered to the tumors.

Now, researchers are developing a new way to more powerfully accelerate the electrons. The key element of the project, called PHASER, is a prototype accelerator component (shown in bronze in this video) that delivers hundreds of times more power than the standard device.

In addition, the researchers are developing a similar device for proton therapy. Although less common than X-rays, protons are sometimes used to kill tumors and are expected to have fewer side effects particularly in sensitive areas like the brain. That’s because protons enter the body at a low energy and release most of that energy at the tumor site, minimizing radiation dose to the healthy tissue as the particles exit the body.

However, proton therapy currently requires large and complex facilities. The Stanford and SLAC team hopes to increase availability by designing a compact, power-efficient and economical proton therapy system that can be used in a clinical setting.

In addition to being faster and possibly more accessible, animal studies indicate that these new X-ray and proton technologies may be more effective.

“We’ve seen in mice that healthy cells suffer less damage when we apply the radiation dose very quickly, and yet the tumor-killing is equal or even a little better than that of a conventional longer exposure,” Loo said in the release. “If the results hold for humans, it would be a whole new paradigm for the field of radiation therapy.”

This is a reposting of my Scope blog story, courtesy of Stanford School of Medicine.

Sensors could provide dexterity to robots, with potential surgical applications

Stanford chemical engineer Zhenan Bao, PhD, has been working for decades to develop an electronic skin that can provide prosthetic or robotic hands with a sense of touch and human-like manual dexterity.

Her team’s latest achievement is a rubber glove with sensors attached to the fingertips. When the glove is placed on a robotic hand, the hand is able to delicately hold a blueberry between its fingertips. As the video shows, it can also gently move a ping-pong ball in and out of holes without crushing it.

The sensors in the glove’s fingertips mimic the biological sensors in our skin, simultaneously measuring the intensity and direction of pressure when touched. Each sensor is composed of three flexible layers that work together, as described in the recent paper published in Science Robotics.

The sensor’s two outer layers have rows of electrical components that are aligned perpendicular to each other. Together, they make up a dense array of small electrical sensing pixels. In between these layers is an insulating rubber spacer.

The electrically-active outer layers also have a bumpy bottom that acts like spinosum — a spiny sublayer in human skin with peaks and valleys. This microscopic terrain is used to measure the pressure intensity. When a robotic finger lightly touches an object, it is felt by sensing pixels on the peaks. When touching something more firmly, pixels in the valleys are also activated.

Similarly, the researchers use the terrain to detect the direction of the touch. For instance, when the pressure comes from the left, then its felt by pixels on the left side of the peaks more than the right side.

Once more sensors are added, such electronic gloves could be used for a wide range of applications. As a recent Stanford Engineering news release explains, “With proper programming a robotic hand wearing the current touch-sensing glove could perform a repetitive task such as lifting eggs off a conveyor belt and placing them into cartons. The technology could also have applications in robot-assisted surgery, where precise touch control is essential.”

However, Bao hopes in the future to develop a glove that can gently handle objects automatically. She said in the release:

“We can program a robotic hand to touch a raspberry without crushing it, but we’re a long way from being able to touch and detect that it is a raspberry and enable the robot to pick it up.”

This is a reposting of my Scope blog story, courtesy of Stanford School of Medicine.