The process of measuring your anatomy and marking your skin to help your team direct the beams of radiation safely and exactly to their intended locations is called simulation.

Although simulation is typically only one session, your physician may schedule additional sessions depending on the type of cancer you have and the type of radiation therapy that is being used.  This session may take from 30-60 minutes.

All this information will be used by your radiation oncologist, the physicist, and the dosimetrist to accurately design your treatment plan.

After simulation, your radiation oncologist and other members of the treatment team review the information they obtained during simulation along with your previous medical tests to develop a treatment plan. Often, a special treatment planning CT scan is done to help with the simulation and treatment planning. This CT scan is in addition to your diagnostic CT scan.  When planning your treatment, we use state of the art technologies, including PET, MRI & CT image fusion. This gives us the ability to develop multi-faceted effective treatment plans, tailored specifically for you.

State of the Art treatment-planning computer software is used to help design the best possible treatment plan. After reviewing all this information, your doctor writes a prescription that outlines the exact course of your radiation therapy treatment.