Veterinary medicine research collaboration aims to reduce radiation threat to healthy soft tissue

When delivering radiation therapy to a tumor, clinicians want to be as precise as possible, using imaging, such as CT scans, to ensure the radiation targets the right area. However, when a tumor is located within the chest cavity or within or near the lungs, it is difficult to know that the tumor is in the same place when it is treated as when it was imaged. Each breath can cause the tumor to shift in position, making it difficult for clinicians to accurately target cancer cells without harming nearby tissue.

Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) member Dr. Kim Selting, associate professor of radiation oncology in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine, and Dr. Geoffrey Hugo, professor of radiation oncology and Vice Chair of medical physics at Washington University in St. Louis and member of the Siteman Cancer Center, are working to combat this complex issue through their research project, Development and Translation of Data-Driven Four-Dimensional Radiotherapy, funded by the Siteman Investment Program Research Development Award (RDA) and the CCIL.  

To support this project, the CCIL and Siteman Cancer Center each provided funding.  The Siteman Investment Program RDA provides seed funding to faculty investigators with innovative cancer research ideas to generate data for future external grants.

Dr. Timothy Fan, Associate Director for Translational Research and Development at the CCIL, believes the project is one that is foundational to creating a cross-institutional hub for innovation that mixes engineering research and clinical practice.

“Professor Hugo is a researcher who really focuses on image processing and analysis,” Fan said. “And both Drs. Hugo and Selting have specialty backgrounds in radiation therapy and radiation oncology, Both of them understand the importance of very accurate image acquisition and processing to allow the delivery of radiation therapy to protect very sensitive organs.”

In her clinic, Selting primarily treats dogs with naturally occurring cancers, which allows her to study tumors that closely mimic those that would occur in humans.

“Animals can be a really nice model for radiation therapy research to treat cancer,” Selting said. “Companion animals have spontaneous cancer just like people do. They share our environment and they have intact immune systems, so there’s a lot of reasons why dogs are used in research which translates those findings to people.”

Selting collects imaging referred to as respiratory gated cone-beam CT (CBCT) scans, a specialized four-dimensional imaging technique that uses a cone shaped X-ray to produce very detailed images of soft tissue, from dogs as they breathe during treatment. These images are then shared with Hugo’s lab, where algorithms are used to reconstruct motion-compensated scans to make the images clearer and more precise.

“This project aims to optimize radiation targeting strategies,” Selting said. “The images are sent to Dr. Hugo’s lab at Siteman Cancer Center where he uses algorithms to decrease artifacts and background noise, making the images clearer so that the patient can be positioned exactly as planned.”

Currently, Selting has scanned all ten dogs with this cone-beam technology using respiratory gating. Hugo’s model, originally trained on human data, successfully reconstructed the canine scans. The team presented their findings at the 2025 American Association of Physicists in Medicine Annual Meeting, where the project earned a Blue-Ribbon Poster Award for Excellence in Research.

​​“I can treat cancer with high doses of radiation and be successful,” Selting said. “But I am limited by the normal tissue nearby and around the tumors. Using motion management allows us to more accurately deliver radiation only to the tumor and maybe a little bit of tissue around it, but not to a larger volume of tissue as it would with conventional radiation therapy. Ideally, we would treat normal tissue less with fewer long-term complications and side effects.”

The RDA grant and CCIL funding also made advanced imaging more accessible for pet owners. “This study provided money to cover the cost of the CT scan, which gives the owners the ability to make informed decisions for their pets,” Selting said. “With that information, they can make decisions with peace of mind, and I can deliver radiation as safely as possible.”

This project is an example of the partnerships the CCIL will continue to establish with centers like Siteman to do comprehensive, translational research.

“We’re very excited for our basic science cancer center to become a national hub for discovery,” Fan said. “We’re also thrilled to collaborate with esteemed comprehensive cancer centers like Siteman Cancer Center. These initial projects represent the foundation of what we hope will grow into a robust and productive partnership with Siteman. We look forward to seeing some of our devices and inventions translated into human clinical trials through their comprehensive cancer center capabilities.”

Editor’s notes:

To contact Kim Selting, email her at seltingk@illinois.edu.

This story was written by Hailee Munno, CCIL Communications intern.