RT-CARE - Computational Approaches for Radiotherapy Planning of Excellence
Title: RT-CARE - Computational Approaches for Radiotherapy Planning of Excellence
Coordinators at INESCC: Joana Maria Pina Cabral Matos Dias
Co-Coordinator: Humberto José da Silva Pereira Rocha
Project Team:
Date of approval: 26-04-2018
Dates start/end: 01-07-2018 / 30-06-2021
Total Eligible Cost: 229 483.25€
EU Financial Support: 195 060.76€
National Financial Support: 34 422.49€
Project Code: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028030
Region of intervention:
Beneficiaries: INESC Coimbra - Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores de Coimbra
Copromotor:
Site:
Synopsis
Radiotherapy is a technology driven approach for cancer treatment, with different modalities that share the need for a trial-and-error computer-assisted Radiotherapy Treatment Planning (RTP) procedure based on a Treatment Planning System (TPS) that presents severe limitations. Despite the appearance of powerful computational resources, improvement of dose calculation algorithms, semi-automated segmentation algorithms and 3D visualization tools, RTP is still workload expensive; the plan's quality is highly dependent on the planner's skills, experience and time availability; it is not possible to know whether a better treatment plan is achievable. It is crucial to evolve to a future generation of Treatment Planning Services, based on automated treatment planning and new plan quality assessment metrics.
The project is aligned with the European Society for Radiotherapy & Oncology Vision 2020: "Every cancer patient in Europe will have access to state of the art radiation therapy, as part of a multidisciplinary approach where treatment is individualized for the specific patient's cancer, taking account of the patient's personal circumstances." It aims to achieve breakthrough developments in RTP, improving the quality of treatments, leading to increased cure rates, decreased treatment induced morbidity, reduction of planners' workload, keeping high quality of care affordable for all. The project will develop models and algorithms to be incorporated in future TPS software solutions, making fully automated treatment planning closer to reality for different modalities. The project team is especially well suited to tackle the main challenges of RTP automation. Researchers come from different scientific domains (operations research, medical physics, computer science, medicine) and professional backgrounds (research, education, clinical). The team has established links with renowned researchers like B. Heijmen (Erasmus MC, Rotterdam), U. Oelfke (Institute of Cancer Research, London), M. Alber (Aarhus University), D. Craft (Harvard Medical School, Boston), D. Aleman (University of Toronto).
The project is aligned with key objectives of the EU Framework for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 and with the Portuguese National Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialization. "Information Technology" and "Health and Well Being" are thematic differentiated domains for Portuguese Centre Region. "Technologies for Quality of Life" is a priority area, focusing on personalized medicine and consolidation of excellence in clinical practice.
The project is highly cross-disciplinary, requiring advanced mathematics, very fast computations, and deep insight in radiotherapy. It is ambitious and well-anchored in the team's earlier achievements. The experience of the team, the current advances in optimization approaches and computational resources availability, makes now the perfect timing and this the perfect team to tackle the incoming challenges.
