Center for Magnetic Resonance has employed Sofie Rahbek as PhD student, starting 15 August 2018.
Sofie Rahbek will work on the project Development of Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Methods for Radiotherapy Response Studies, which is funded by the Danish Cancer Society. Supervisors are CMR's Associate Professor Lars G. Hanson and Assistant Professor Faisal Mahmood from Odense University Hospital.
The overall aim of the project is to improve radiotherapy of patients suffering from secondary tumors in the brain by developing and improving MRI methods to reveal and deliver biological information of relevance.
With an incidence of 9-17 % of all cancer cases and an increasing rate, secondary brain tumors is the most common intracranial malignancy in adults, and the efficacy of current standards of therapy needs to be improved.
MRI is widely used in radiology with many applications in oncology. However, the project will give an understanding of reponse to treatment on a microscopic level. Through methods such as quantitative and diffusion weighted MRI, it will offer an imaging biomarker of treatment response in patients receiving radiotherapy, thus opening the possibility of day-to-day therapy guidance and monitoring.
The research will be carried out in close collaboration with Odense University Hospital, who in spring 2018 installed the first Danish MRI-linear accelerator, combining MR scanner and radiotherapy. The project aims towards an implementation of the developed specialized MRI sequences on the MR linac, enabling early and frequent adaptation of patient treatment plans based on precise biological information acquired with robust MRI sequences.