Clinical Brachytherapy

Brachytherapy is characterised by a high targeted treatment dose with a simultaneous steeply decreasing dose in the surrounding healthy tissue and thus enables a high degree of adaptation to the specific target area and organ topography.

At our department, brachytherapy is currently used primarily in the treatment of gynaecological tumours, prostate carcinomas and ano-rectal tumours, but there are also many years of experience and expertise in partial breast irradiation and in intraoperative brachytherapy for soft tissue sarcomas. The availability of state-of-the-art technical equipment and the excellent international network enable extensive research activities, which are characterised by national and international awards, third-party research funding and publications in top journals. Current studies and research topics include above all:

• EMBRACE studies (Retro-EMBRACE I, EMBRACE I, EMBRACE II as well as the start of 3rd generation studies (EMBRACE CT, MR real life und retro-EMBRACE II)
• EMBRAVE study (vaginal carcinoma
• MRI-based brachytherapy planning  („adaptive online MR-only“)
• Development of innovative application techniques and patient-specific applicators
• Creation of personalised dose-response relationships and their use in expert systems
• Precision medicine
• Ultrasound for image-guided application optimisation and as a possible alternative to MRI imaging
• Co-development of innovative radiation planning software