# Precision breast radiotherapy with the soft robot and supine CT

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO · 2024 · $382,958

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Radiotherapy is essential to achieve durable disease control for breast cancer patients. However, despite several
decades of research and development in imaging and radiotherapy techniques, breast radiotherapy remains
crude due to the lack of viable methods to accurately isolate, immobilize, localize and target the breast.
Subsequently, the success of tumor control is at the cost of both acute and chronic toxicities that adversely affect
the patients’ quality of life and potentially introduce life-threatening complications decades after the curative
treatment. The challenge in providing accurate breast imaging and therapy is due to the unique biomechanical
properties of the breast, which is an external organ with no internal skeletal support. As a result, its shape varies
substantially with the patient's posture. In the supine position, which is the most stable and common position for
radiotherapy, the breast rests on the chest wall, resulting in its close proximity to the chest wall, lung, heart, and
other vital organs, which creates an undesirable geometry for radiotherapy. Yet, existing devices for supine
breast setup not only provide poor support and immobilization but also adversely interfere with imaging and
therapy X-rays. Patients treated in the prone position experience new problems, including the lower setup
reproducibility, increased cardiac dose due to heart descending, the difficulty to tolerate, and incompatibility with
nodal treatment. To attain the desirable prone breast geometry and avoid drawbacks associated with this posture,
a more effective method to lift the breast from the chest wall and to image the breast in the supine position is
urgently needed for precision image-guided breast radiotherapy. To achieve the first goal, a pneumatically
powered multi-gait soft robot, BreastBot, will be developed and optimized to support and immobilize the breast
in the supine position. The BreastBot will be fabricated in several generic form factors to minimize the cost but
personalized for each breast via an individualized actuation sequence. The feasibility of BreastBot has been
demonstrated using single gait prototypes on volunteers and phantoms. To achieve the second goal, which is to
image the BreastBot immobilized breast for image-guided radiotherapy, avoid imaging dose to the patient's body,
and achieve a higher image quality, a novel supine ceiling-mounted breast CT will be developed. The following
four aims are proposed for image-guided supine breast radiotherapy. Aim 1: Optimization of a breast setup soft
robot (BreastBot) for supine breast setup. Aim 2: Development of a ceiling-mounted CBCT for breast image-
guided radiation therapy. Aim 3: Specific Aim 3: End-to-end integration, validation, and observational patient
study.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10896404
- **Project number:** 5R01EB031577-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO
- **Principal Investigator:** Lihua Jin
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $382,958
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-09-01 → 2026-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10896404

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10896404, Precision breast radiotherapy with the soft robot and supine CT (5R01EB031577-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10896404. Licensed CC0.

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