Emerging Technologies in Brachytherapy

About

Dr. William Y. Song is the Head of the Department of Medical Physics at the Odette Cancer Centre Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto Canada. This is one of the largest medical physics units in the world with 50+ staff. Along with a busy external beam radiotherapy program the centre sees close to 600 brachytherapy patients a year making it the busiest program in Canada. Since joining the centre in 2014 he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Medical Sciences Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering and Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics at the Ryerson University Toronto Canada. He received his PhD degree in 2006 at the University of Western Ontario London Canada on the topic of image guided treatment approaches for prostate cancer. Since then he has pursued research in the field of image guidance systems 4D motion management technologies and brachytherapy resulting in over 50+ peer-reviewed publications and 130+ conference abstracts. Along the way he became a fully certified medical physicist (American Board of Radiology 2010) directly supervised(ing) 20+ MSc and PhD graduate students an ad hoc reviewer for 20+ research journals and is a member of the Board of Associate Editors for the Journal of Medical Physics. In brachytherapy particular his research focus has been in developing novel applicators and MR image processing techniques that enhances plan quality and plan quality evaluations; one in particular in cleverly designing MR-compatible metal alloys to create non-isotropic dose distributions that can in combination with inverse planning gain exceptional dosimetric conformality for use in image guided adaptive brachytherapy. Dr. Kari Tanderup is Professor at Department of Oncology Aarhus University Hospital in Aarhus Denmark. She was educated from Aarhus University with a masters degree in physics and math in 1997. In 2008 she received her PhD degree with a thesis on brachytherapy in cervix cancer. Furthermore since 2011 she has been appointed as visiting professor at Medical University of Vienna. At Aarhus University Hospital Kari Tanderup chairs a research group working with brachytherapy and MR image guidance. Her main research interests are MRI guided cervix and prostate cancer clinical studies and in vivo dosimetry. Within these topics she has authored 90+ papers and has supervised 10+ PhD students. Furthermore she was committee member for the ICRU Report 89 on brachytherapy in cervix cancer and she is Associate Senior Editor for International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology and Physics. Kari Tanderup is actively contributing to committee and task group work in ESTRO and is course director in the ESTRO school. She is chairing the GEC ESTRO gyn network which represents the most active core European academic centers within gynecological brachytherapy and embraces members from Central/Eastern Europe India Canada and USA. Through past and on-going activities this group is internationally recognized as a leading group in gynecological image guided brachytherapy. The group has published international guidelines which are now used worldwide. The GEC ESTRO gyn group has also coordinated the EMBRACE study which is an international multicenter study on MRI guided brachytherapy in cervix cancer. The EMBRACE trial has recruited >1400 patients and this material is currently generating a wealth of clinical evidence on outcome as well as dose and effect relationships. Dr. Bradley R. Pieters MD PhD is the Head of the Brachytherapy department at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam The Netherlands. The AMC has a focus on Brachytherapy Hyperthermia and Image-guided radiotherapy. He was trained as radiation oncologist at the Radboud University Hospital in Nijmegen The Netherlands. Because of his interest in brachytherapy he followed at the end of the residency a brachytherapy fellowship at the Daniel den Hoed clinic in Rotterdam and L'Institut Gustav-Roussy in Villejuif France. Dr. Pieters received his MSc in epidemiology in 2006. In 2010 he received his PhD degree at the University of Amsterdam after defending his thesis Pulsed-dose rate brachytherapy in prostate cancer. Dr. Pieters main field of interest is general brachytherapy with an emphasis on urologic brachytherapy gynecologic brachytherapy and pediatric brachytherapy. His research topics focus on prostate brachytherapy; development of advanced treatment planning optimization algorithms; external beam and brachytherapy dose summation in cervical cancer; and late effects assessment in pediatric brachytherapy. In his role as leader of the brachytherapy research group he supervises PhD students and contributed to more than 40 peer-reviewed papers with the majority concerning brachytherapy topics. He is one of the co-editors of Journal of Contemporary Brachytherapy and is member of the Editorial Board of Brachytherapy. For the GEC-ESTRO (Group Europeén de Curiethérapie-European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology) he contributes as course director for the Comprehensive and Practical Brachytherapy course and is member of the GEC-ESTRO Committee.