Malignant Tumors of the CNS

Abstract

Malignant primary brain tumors are approached in a multi-modality setting, with upfront maximum safe resection and adjuvant radiation therapy, with chemotherapy used in certain tumor subtypes. Since these patients undergo multi-modality treatments, extensive review of pre-operative and post-operative imaging is key to understanding and identifying areas at risk of local recurrence to include in radiotherapy treatment planning volumes. MR imaging is critical to target volume delineation for radiotherapy treatment planning. It is also important to delineate important organs-at-risk in the brain for dosimetric planning. In the following chapter, important principles regarding target volume delineation and radiotherapy technique and dose/fractionation recommendations will be discussed.