A personal perspective on the development and future of cone‐beam CT for image‐guided radiotherapy

Abstract The development of cone‐beam CT guided radiotherapy has transformed radiation oncology in the 20 years since it was first released commercially. The technological pace of change has spurred a massive transformation in our daily clinical practice, forced us to evolve our approach to multi‐ and inter‐disciplinary collaboration, and enabled new treatment paradigms. Further progress in integrating quantitative CT in these robotic platforms promises to do even more by “burying the complexity” of radiotherapy and leveraging the expanding digital fabric that uses machine learning approaches to bring semi‐automated expertise to bear on the issues of expertise and quality. This is the only way we will be able to respond to the massive global shortfall in high‐quality radiotherapy services across the globe.