The future of radiotherapy

Jan 29, 2025

Indrin Chetty, Vice Chair and Director at Cedars-Sinai, discusses the future of radiotherapy amid a rising cancer incidence. He shares insights on AI-optimized workflows that enhance treatment personalization and speed up planning. The talk delves into challenges like staff shortages and the need for ethical data governance. Chetty also emphasizes the transformative potential of digital twins in personalizing treatment while safeguarding healthy tissues. The conversation highlights the importance of reliable data and patient collaboration in improving cancer care.

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INSIGHT

Radiotherapy's Vital Role and AI

Radiotherapy is essential in cancer treatment and must evolve with increasing cancer incidence.
AI-driven workflows enhance speed and personalization in treatment planning.

INSIGHT

Digital Twins Enhance Precision

Digital patient twins enable modeling of individual health factors for tailored radiotherapy.
This technology helps protect healthy tissue by adjusting radiation to patient-specific conditions.

ANECDOTE

Boosting Immunity with Combined Therapies

Combining targeted therapies with radiotherapy boosts the patient’s immune response.
This combined treatment increases chances of survival while reducing toxicity by tailoring radiation plans.

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Radiotherapy plays a vital role in cancer treatment. In Europe alone, incidents of cancer are projected to rise around 20% by 2040, mainly due to an increasingly aging population. It’s numbers like these that emphasize the importance of pushing boundaries in radiotherapy.

With AI-optimized workflows, it’s possible to speed up treatment planning and ensure highly personalized therapies and technology like auto contouring can protect healthy organs during irradiation by means of AI. This implementation, however, is often met with challenges like staff shortages and inconsistencies with data collection, highlighting the need for more efficient implementation strategies.

In this episode, experts in the fields of radiotherapy and cancer treatment address the amazing headway being made in the world of radiotherapy as well as some of the key roles that current technology can play in the future.

Host Sasa Mutic, President of Radiation Oncology Solutions at the Varian Business Area of Siemens Healthineers, is joined by Valery Lemmens, a member of the Board of Directors at Maastro Radiotherapy Clinic in the Netherlands and creator of the Dutch Cancer Atlas; as well as Joost Verhoeff, radiation oncologist and professor of radiotherapy at Amsterdam University Medical Center; and Indrin Chetty, Vice Chair and Director of the Division of Medical Physics at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

By using a digital twin, medical professionals can review existing health records and continually compare that information with patient data
With adaptive radiotherapy, radiation dosages can be tailored to circumstances like tumor size, type, and position and proximity to vital organs
The Dutch Cancer Atlas interprets and publishes data in a context that increases awareness of regional differences in cancer incidents
The unique role that data plays in the advancement of cancer care
The deep troves of data that already exist within radiotherapy departments can play a key role in the integration of AI into cancer treatments
Widespread availability of data creates the opportunity for automated treatment planning and outcome prediction

Connect with Sasa Mutic

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Indrin Chetty

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