OMA Fellows present their research at PTCOG 56 Conference
The Particle Therapy Co-Operative Group is a non-profit organization focused on proton, light ions and heavy charged particles used for radiotherapy. A PTCOG conference is organized every year to gather physicists, biologist, physicians and other researchers from all over the world. This year the event took place in Japan, in the cities of Chiba and Yokohama, from the 8th to the 13th of May.
Hanen Ziri, OMA Fellow from CNAO, presented a poster on “Tumor tracking system at CNAO: one more step toward clinical use”, which is the focus of her project in OMA. She presented a summary of preliminary experiments performed at CNAO for moving tumor’s motion compensation using the tumor tracking approach. Hanen also enjoyed attending the motion management session, physics track, which was very useful for the development of her project. She also had a chance to explore other areas of research, such as dosimetry and beam delivery, beam biological effects, range verification and uncertainties, treatment planning and dose calculations, as well as investigation of particle therapy clinical outcomes.
Hanen Ziri
Giulia Aricò, OMA Fellow hosted by CERN, gave a talk and presented a poster on her PhD research. In this work she investigated the secondary radiation arising during radiotherapy treatments. This secondary radiation can cause a mismatch between the planned and the delivered dose, and can lead to unwanted side effects in the patients. Therefore, higher accuracy and quality in the treatment planning and in the dose calculations can be achieved with a deeper understanding on the nuclear interaction processes.
Giulia Aricò
Overall, both Hanen and Giulia enjoyed the experience and appreciated the opportunity of meeting experts and students from all over the world and learn about ongoing research in their field.