ENLIGHT meeting 2018
From 25th to 27th of June, the annual ENLIGHT Meeting and Training took place at University College London (UCL). ENLIGHT is an acronym for European Network for Light Ion Hadron Therapy, having been established at CERN in 2002 to coordinate the European efforts in hadron therapy. QUASARs Jacinta Yap and , along with OMA fellow Laurent Kelleter (UCL) both attended the 16th annual ENLIGHT meeting.
The first day of the meeting was dedicated to hands-on training on proton therapy. It included talks on the clinical and physics potential of proton therapy, quality assurance in clinical trials and the public perception of proton therapy in the UK, to name just a few. The day was rounded up by a demonstration of the Eclipse treatment planning system by Varian. The second day focused on dosimetry, imaging and patient selection. Clinicians and scientists from multiple proton and ion centres across Europe and the USA reported about their experience and practise. After a long day of interesting talks and lively discussions, the conference participants enjoyed a boat cruise on the river Thames through the British capital.
Jacinta also had the opportunity to contribute to the conference with a poster, presenting the simulation modelling of the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre (CCC) beamline. The poster highlighted preliminary work done to model the entire beamline including the beam transport and particle tracking; a result of collaborative efforts with UCL, Royal Holloway, University of London and CCC.
On the final meeting day, there were sessions on combined radio- and immunotherapy, the differences of treatment with different light ions and paediatrics. The whole meeting was live-blogged on Twitter where details on the talks can be found under the hashtag #ENLIGHT2018 or by following the PART group @ProtonAdvancedRT. The next meeting will be hosted by the then brand new proton therapy facility of Caen, France.