“A global view of how technology is guiding radiation therapeutics for cancers”

Over the last several years, the field of medicine has begun to embrace computational advances as a means of improving treatment delivery, patient management, outcomes, and other metrics of performance. No field has embraced technology out of necessity and innovation more than radiation oncology. Generally, radiation oncology is a subspecialty of oncology which utilizes high dose ionizing radiation as a means of accurately and effectively killing malignancies of many pathologies. This radiation must be delivered to tumors while avoiding significant normal tissue toxicities. From novel imaging tools to the most advanced linear accelerators, robust hardware and software allowing for treatment planning to the integration of information processing, many layers of computational intensity are needed to safely treat cancer patients with radiation therapy. This talk will provide a macroscopic view of the many technologies and knowledge bases necessary to successfully drive radiation oncology treatment practices in the present and future.