Present and future role of MRI in radiotherapy

This paper explores the integration of MRI into modern clinical radiotherapy practice, examining its potential to enhance treatment precision, efficiency, and improve patient outcomes. The study offers an overview of MRI applications, including radiotherapy planning, image registration, quality assurance with an emphasis on reducing geometric distortions, and real-time adaptive MRI-guided radiotherapy. The introduction covers the use of MRI in treatment planning, followed by a description of its role during therapy, emphasizing functional imaging techniques and motion control. Dosimetric requirements, CT replacement techniques, and adaptive MRI-guided real-time radiotherapy are also discussed. The paper also presents early results obtained from MRI-linear accelerators, discussing technical challenges and the current status of these devices. Finally, by analyzing various scientific articles, the future role of magnetic resonance imaging in radiotherapy is considered, and conclusions are drawn based on the analyses and results collected.