Quantification of the effects of Microbeam Radiation Therapy on tumor tissue and vascular network on healthy vs tumour-bearing rat brains by

In this experiment, we aim at using X-ray phase-contrast micro-CT (XPCI-CT) for post-mortem imaging of healthy and glioblastoma-bearing brains after in-vivo treatment with synchrotron generated X-ray standard broad beams or Microbeam Radiation Therapy (MRT). The goal is to continue a study started before the ESRF-EBS shutdown and achieve the necessary statistical significance for the validation of the results obtained in the first experiments on both healthy and glioblastoma-bearing rats. Results showed, with a high level of details, the effects of the MRT treatment on the nervous and vasculature tissues at the animals’ end of life (i.e. late-term radiotherapy effects). Furthermore, the quantitative assessment of tumour growth or regression was also possible on XPCI-CT images, but results show unclear behaviours due to inter-individual variability within a group that can be cleared up only by increasing the study statistics.