Opening of POP-AART lab, a new ICAI Lab

New AI-strategies for improving radiotherapy

The Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Informatics Institute (UvA) , and Elekta officially launched their Partnership for Online Personalized AI-driven Adaptive Radiation Therapy (POP-AART). Within this lab the involved parties collaborate on the development of new AI strategies for the further improvement of precision radiotherapy. This concerns the personalization of treatment by improving the quality of imaging used during treatment, predicting and accounting for changes in the patient’s anatomy over time, and automatically adapting radiation delivery each time a patient is treated.

It is a major challenge to give patients the right dose of radiation, at the right spot with least damage to healthy tissue, and while the patient and the tumor move and change shape during radiation and over time. And this should happen at each and every treatment session (which varies from 3 to 35). Within the POP-AART lab six PhD researchers develop novel AI strategies for improving the images on which the radiation treatment is based, predicting changes over time of the tumor and incorporating them in automatic treatment planning and adaptation.

All 6 of the work packages involve deep learning and cover fundamental research topics. These range from improving CT images obtained just before radiation to the level of diagnostic quality CT images, predicting deformations and segmentations of the tumor and organs at risk and incorporate these data in online and automated treatment plan optimization for each patient individually at each radiation session.

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