Image Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT) for Prone Partial Breast Irradiation

Partial breast irradiation (PBI) is becoming a new paradigm for breast cancer radiation.\[1\] No type I or II evidence is currently available to demonstrate equivalence to standard whole breast radiotherapy, and a prospective randomized trial jointly sponsored by NSABP and RTOG (NSABP B-39 and RTOG 0413) is currently accruing patients, comparing whole breast radiotherapy to PBI, either by brachytherapy or external beam techniques (EB). Until the results of this or similar trials are available, PBI remains a research domain, and it should be offered to patients only in the context of a clinical experimental protocol.