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In the light of this year’s congress theme, “From innovation to action”, let us embrace artificial intelligence (AI) to transform the field of radiation oncology, specifically brachytherapy, and reflect on how this will affect our traditional way of working and thinking.

In this talk I will first paint a rough picture of where and how AI can play a role in the brachytherapy workflow. I will furthermore shortly touch upon the fact that there are different types of AI. Next, I will dive a bit deeper into two different AI-based approaches (i.e., protocol-based or example-based) for brachytherapy treatment planning and discuss how each will in a different way affect the traditional way of treatment planning. Specifically, I will address development/tailoring of the approach, updating the approach in case of e.g., protocol changes, how to decide which AI-based brachytherapy treatment plan to use for a new patient, and how to interpret the obtained quality of such a plan. This talk will primarily be based on previous and ongoing efforts by my own research group at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in collaboration with the national research institute for mathematics and computer science in the Netherlands (CWI) and the Amsterdam UMC.