BASIC DATA OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT
- ARRS code: J2-3059
- TITLE: Online adaptive re-planning in proton and radiotherapy
- PROJECT LEADER: prof. Žiga Špiclin
- DURATION: 1.10.2021 - 30.9.2024
- APPLICANT RESEARCH ORGANISATION: University of Ljubljana The Faculty of Electrical Engineering
- PARTICIPATING RESEARCH ORGANISATIONS: Institute of Oncology Ljubljana, Cosylab
- FINANCING: Slovenian Research Agency
Background
The research project focuses on addressing the challenges of adaptive radiotherapy (ART) through ongoing adaptation, which aims to capture everyday anatomical changes and is useful in most cancer sites. Online ART requires a highly-integrated, specialized system due to the compressed timeline; the current plan assessment, potential re-planning, and quality assessment should be performed within 5 minutes, while the patient is already immobilized in the table of treatment machine. The absence of integrated RT planning, imaging, and delivery systems, and the limited interoperability of commercial RT planning systems and equipment seem to be the reasons why online ART is performed in only a few academic RT sites (only 6% of all RT sites apply online ART). The ultimate aim of this project is to develop highly optimized computational tools that comprise a fully functional online ART framework and perform its integration and validation in a prospective clinical study.