“Pre-clinical radiotherapy: from imaging to dose”

Although cancer treatment has evolved tremendously in the last century, many physical and biological questions remain. Pre-clinical radiotherapy represents an important platform for cancer research: from fundamental science to the translation of new strategies to clinical practice. A number of challenges to achieving downscaled treatments persist and form the basis of this PhD thesis. In particular, the role of image quality and its translation into radiation dose, the proper treatment delivery to moving targets such as in lung tumours (affected by respiratory and cardiac motion), the assessment of different dose quantities and their effect on clinical translation and the feasibility of using a clinical proton facility on pre-clinical research to unravel specific characteristics of this technique.