Cecile Wolfs received NRS Travel Grant

Conference report NRS Young Investigator Travel Grant – Cecile Wolfs

From June 13 until June 16, I attended the BiGART (Biology-Guided Adaptive Radiotherapy) 2017 conference in Aarhus, Denmark. The program consisted of invited presentations, proffered papers and poster discussion rounds. There was a wide range of topics discussed in the sessions, from pre-clinical studies on tumor biology to clinical implementations of adaptive radiotherapy and emerging technologies, both in photon and proton therapy. As the topics were so diverse, the participants also represented a broad spectrum of radiobiologists, physicians, physicists and other scientists.

I found the conference very interesting, and it provided me with a good overview of the research that is being performed in the field of adaptive radiotherapy. As the conference was relatively small (~250 participants) there was only one session at a time, which allowed me to broaden my knowledge by also attending sessions on topics not directly related to my own research. I particularly enjoyed the poster discussion rounds, as these provided a very open platform to present and discuss current research, and to get to know other researchers in the field.

As part of my own research is about the detection of anatomical changes that cause dose deviations during radiotherapy, there were several presentations that I found especially interesting. These were, for example, about the dosimetric gain and outcome prediction after treatment plan adaptation for shrinking lung tumors, and about the implementation of adaptive radiotherapy workflows (including their uncertainties) in the clinic.

To conclude, I thought the BiGART 2017 was a very educational and interesting conference and I am glad I could participate!

Cecile Wolfs 
PhD student

Department of Radiotherapy (MAASTRO), GROW – School for Oncology and Developmental Biology, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, The Netherlands