ABSTRACT. Radiotherapy and surgery are the principal curative modalities in treatment of head and neck cancer. Conventional two-dimensional and three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy result in significant side effects and altered quality of life. Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) can spare the normal tissues, while delivering a curative dose to the tumour-bearing tissues. This article reviews the current role of IMRT in head and neck cancer from the point of view of normal tissue sparing, and also reviews the current published literature by individual head and neck cancer subsites. In addition, we briefly discuss the role of image guidance in head and neck IMRT, and future directions in this area. Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) is an advanced approach to three-dimensional (3D) treatment planning and conformal therapy. It optimises the delivery of irradiation to irregularly shaped volumes and has the ability to produce concavities in radiation treatment volumes. For head and neck cancer, the clinical target volume 1 (CTV1), which includes the primary tumour and the involved nodes, typically receives a higher radiation dose than CTV2. The different doses to CTV1 and 2 can be delivered simultaneously, while sparing the parotid salivary glands and the spinal cord. In the head and neck region, IMRT has a number of potential advantages: (i) it allows for greater sparing of normal structures such as salivary glands, oesophagus, optic nerves, brain stem and spinal cord [7,8]; (ii) it allows treatment to be delivered in a single treatment phase without the requirement for matching additional fields to provide tumour boosts, and eliminates the need for electron fields to the posterior (levels II and V) neck nodes; and (iii) it offers the possibility of simultaneously delivering higher radiation doses to regions of gross disease and lower doses to areas of microscopic disease-the so-called simultaneous integrated boost (SIB) IMRT [9].IMRT can be delivered using linear accelerators with static multileaf collimators (MLCs; step and shoot IMRT) or dynamic leaf MLCs, tomotherapy machines or volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT). Tomotherapy enables the simultaneous use of image guidance and treatment delivery [10]. However, adaptive RT based on image guidance is yet to be clinically optimised in head and neck cancer. VMAT is a newer technique of delivering IMRT. VMAT delivers IMRT-like distributions in a single rotation of the gantry, varying the gantry speed and dose rate during delivery, in contrast to standard IMRT, which uses fixed gantry beams. Planning studies using RT demonstrate shorter planning and treatment time, fewer monitor units for treatment delivery and better dose homogeneity and normal tissue sparing [11,12]. There is a lack of data as regards clinical implementation of this technique.IMRT was first described in 1999; in the last decade numerous retrospective case series (single and multiinstitution) and a few randomised trials have been published studying the clinical implementation of thi...