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| Parameters/information that are difficult to obtain (quantitatively) | Reason for the difficulty | Overcoming the difficulty |
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| Aggressiveness and time of onset of accelerated repopulation | Intertumour variability that is unknown cannot measure/estimate for individual patients without cell biopsy sample used in in vitro tests which may alter results | Grouping patients into tumours that are likely to have slow or fast repopulation by some means of genetic/pathologic testing—however methods currently unknown |
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| The extent of various mechanisms responsible for tumour repopulation during treatment | The interplay between recruitment, accelerated stem division, abortive division and loss of asymmetrical division, in stem cells makes it difficult to evaluate their individual effect | Research stem cell properties for rapidly proliferating tumours.Sensitivity study on each individual and combined parameter when modelling |
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| Input of individualised tumour data, for example, intrinsic radiosensitivity, differences in stem/transit or quiescent cell radiosensitivity | Currently no pretreatment testing due to logistics and time of testing | Research cell type/proliferative capacity-dependent radiosensitivities for different tumour cell lines, individualised radiosensitivity pre-treatment testing (requires staff/money/time) |
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| Tumour oxygenation/reoxygenation | Different in every tumour, changes in time, access to equipment, for example, daily/weekly PET, invasive nature of in vivo quantitative data gathering, for example, Eppendorf/Oxy Lab probe | Access and research into to the feasibility and drug development for daily/weekly PET scans, with tracers that can image hypoxic regions with various thresholds, for example, 2.5, 5.0, 10 mm Hg |
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| Drug pharmacokinetics | Lack of quantitative in vivo assays | Using in vitro data if existent, parameter estimation and sensitivity study. Molecular pharmacological modelling is required |
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| Cell survival data for chemotherapy | Lack of mathematical formalism equivalent to the LQ model used in radiotherapy | Using in vitro data if existent for that particular agent |
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