# Academic-Industry Partnership for the Translation of a 4D in vivo Dosimetry Approach for Radiation Therapy

> **NIH NIH R37** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE · 2024 · $405,629

## Abstract

NIH Merit Award (R37) extension request-R37CA240806, Xiang, (Shawn) Liangzhong
The Overall Objective of this application is to enable in vivo dosimetry during radiation therapy in cancer patient to
the end-user– the medical physicist. Our Hypothesis is that X-ray-induced Acoustic Computed tomography
(XACT) can be used for 4D in vivo dosimetry in patients. In XACT, pulsed x-rays are absorbed and converted to
heat. The resulting thermoelastic expansion generates a 3D acoustic wave, which can be detected by acoustic
detectors to form images. The amplitude of the acoustic waves is proportional to X-ray absorption, and therefore
encodes dose information. Our overall strategy is to design/construct a 3D XACT dosimetric scanner, and to
test/refine the imaging prototype under clinical conditions based on an Academic-Industrial partnership among
University of California, Irvine (UCI), University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC), and PhotoSound
Technologies Inc. Our original specific aims in year 1-5 are: (Specific aim 1) Evaluate the basis of the XACT
imaging in radiotherapy dosimetry; (Specific aim 2) Develop a 3D XACT imaging system for clinical
implementation; and (Specific aim 3) Validate the performance of XACT under clinical conditions. For year
6&7, we propose to develop dual-modal XACT/US imaging system that combines both XACT and pulse-echo
ultrasound imaging. It can be used for 1) real-time monitoring the misalignment between the targeted tumor and
the delivered radiation beam during radiotherapy, and 2) quantitative dose measurement in vivo, which will push
the current paradigm to high-precision radiotherapy. This discovery is the first time in history that radiation dose in
tissue could be directly visualized with high spatial and temporal resolution. If successful, the ability to localize the
radiation beam and map the radiation dose will enable a paradigm shift towards high-precision radiotherapy.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10732389
- **Project number:** 4R37CA240806-06
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE
- **Principal Investigator:** Yong Chen
- **Activity code:** R37 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $405,629
- **Award type:** 4N
- **Project period:** 2019-09-20 → 2026-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10732389

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10732389, Academic-Industry Partnership for the Translation of a 4D in vivo Dosimetry Approach for Radiation Therapy (4R37CA240806-06). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10732389. Licensed CC0.

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