Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Master of Engineering Science

Program

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Supervisor

Dr. Rajni Patel

Abstract

Lung Cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in North America in both men and women. Brachytherapy is a cancer treatment in which radioactive material is placed in close proximity to cancerous tissue. The material emits radiation in a highly localized area, destroying the cancer while minimizing the amount of healthy cell damage. Lung brachytherapy is an area of active research, but currently does not have the range of treatment options that exist for other types of brachytherapy, for example prostate.

In the thesis, a novel system is presented as a potential new method for performing brachytherapy. The system uses a hand-held laparoscopic style instrument that is automatically aligned to a target location chosen on a computer from an ultrasound image. The results of this research indicate that using this system yields far more accurate placement of radiation sources in an agar test medium than current manual methods.

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