Motivation:

Clinical decision-making, tumour and organ segmentation as well as treatment planning in radiation oncology are based on quantitative anatomical information derived from computed tomography (CT). Since CT imaging is mostly advanced to meet the requirements in radiology, the needs in radiation oncology are often not addressed optimally. Common CT innovations, which have clearly improved the overall image quality, have not been translated into a widespread clinical routine in radiation oncology yet. Guidelines and recommendations on commissioning, calibration and quality assurance for radiotherapeutic CT applications are often insufficient or even missing, which further hamper the time-consuming clinical implementation of CT innovations.

With the introduction of dual-energy CT (DECT) scanners, numerous tailored applications based on the huge variety of DECT-derived datasets have been developed. Recent research studies have identified multiple promising benefits of DECT for treatment planning as well as tumour and organ delineation, for instance. However, the clinical transition from conventional CT to DECT impacts the entire radiotherapy chain from delineation to treatment planning and finally dose application. Hence, this requires even more efforts than the implementation of common CT innovations.

To ensure a proper, fast and widespread clinical integration of CT innovations and improve current practice in radiation oncology, a close collaboration between experienced clinical research institutes and industry partners is worth aspiring to define technical requirements dedicated to radiotherapy, provide guidelines and recommendations on calibration, quality assurance and clinical acceptance levels as well as encourage standardisation.

This workshop will focus on the standardisation of CT commissioning and calibration as well as the clinical implementation of CT and DECT innovations for treatment planning and tumour delineation.

 

Outcome:

We aim at exchanging clinical experiences, challenges and desires in CT commissioning, calibration, routine clinical application, and quality assurance within an interdisciplinary group of medical physicists, radiation oncologists and industry partners to

• specify technical requirements and standardisation guidelines in radiation oncology,
• provide recommendations on CT commissioning, calibration, quality assurance as well as implementation of CT innovations,
• assemble an international expert group to facilitate the widespread clinical implementation of CT innovations and regularly update CT requirements in radiation oncology,
• write a joint white paper and establish future research collaborations.

 

 

Online workshop - 20-21 and 23 October 2021,

Wednesday 20 October (13:00-18:00 CET)
13:00-13:15:       Get together
13:15-14:00:       Interactive corner
14:00-14:45:       Current challenges in the clinical CT workflow
14:45-15:15:       How to address CT challenges
15:15-15:30:       Break
15:30-16:30:       Invited keynote speaker - Jessica Miller, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA
Clinical implementation of spectral CT and overview of AAPM TG66U1
16:30-17:30:       Clinical CT recipes
17:30-18:00:       How to address CT challenges using spectral CT
 
Thursday 21 October (13:00-18:00 CET)
13:00-13:05:       Get together
13:05-14:00:       Interactive corner
14:00-14:45:       Quantitative CT for dose calculation
14:45-15:15:       Metal artifact reduction, iterative reconstruction and extended CT scale
15:15-15:30:       Break
15:30-16:30:       Respiratory 4DCT
16:30-17:00:       Spectral 4DCT
17:00-18:00:       Clinical implementation of spectral CT
 
Saturday 23 October (09:00-16:00 CET)
09:00-09:15:       Get together
09:15-09:30:       Interactive corner
09:30-12:00:       Participant pitches
12:00-13:00:       Lunch break
13:00-14:30:       Recommendations on clinical CT workflows
14:30-15:15:       Existing clinical barriers and needs
15:15-16:00:       Recap and next steps