Publications by authors named "S Azzarouali"
Clinical implementation of RTT-only CBCT-guided online adaptive focal radiotherapy for bladder cancer.
Clin Transl Radiat Oncol
January 2025
Purpose: The study assesses the clinical implementation of radiation therapist (RTT)-only Conebeam CT (CBCT)-guided online adaptive focal radiotherapy (oART) for bladder cancer, by describing the training program, analyzing the workflow and monitoring patient experience.
Materials And Methods: Bladder cancer patients underwent treatment (20 sessions) on a ring-based linac (Ethos, Varian, a Siemens Healthineers Company, USA). Commencing April 2021, 14 patients were treated by RTTs supervised by the Radiation Oncologist (RO) and Medical Physics Expert (MPE) in a multidisciplinary workflow.
Article Synopsis
- Bladder radiotherapy can be tricky because the size and shape of the bladder can change daily, making it hard to treat tumors effectively while avoiding damage to healthy tissue.
- A study compared a new method called online adaptive radiotherapy (oART), which adjusts daily to these changes, with the old method that doesn’t adjust (non-ART).
- Results showed that oART not only effectively targeted the bladder cancer but also reduced radiation exposure to healthy organs, meaning fewer side effects for the patient over two years.
Article Synopsis
- The study looked at a new way to treat bladder cancer using a computer program that can automatically adjust daily treatments without needing a doctor to make changes each time.
- They tested this method on 17 patients, focusing on how well the computer's work matched up with the usual treatment techniques.
- The results showed that while the computer did a good job, there were still some differences in how the treatment areas were outlined compared to the traditional method used by doctors.
Background And Purpose: Over the past decade, tools for automation of various sub-tasks in radiotherapy planning have been introduced, such as auto-contouring and auto-planning. The purpose of this study was to benchmark what degree of automation is possible.
Materials And Methods: A challenge to perform automated treatment planning for prostate and prostate bed radiotherapy was set up.
Purpose: The aim was to assess the feasibility of online adaptive radiotherapy (oART) for bladder cancer using a focal boost by focusing on the quality of the online treatment plan and automatic target delineation, duration of the workflow and performance in the presence of fiducial markers for tumor bed localization.
Methods: Fifteen patients with muscle invasive bladder cancer received daily oART with Cone Beam CT (CBCT), artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted automatic delineation of the daily anatomy and online plan reoptimization. The bladder and pelvic lymph nodes received a total dose of 40 Gy in 20 fractions, the tumor received an additional simultaneously integrated boost (SIB) of 15 Gy.