Episode 10: Clinical innovation in radiotherapy
In this new DSMINDSETS Podcast episode we invited Ana Vaniqui. Ana worked as an Innovation Physicist at Maastro Clinic for many years where she is also very involved in the research projects. Maastro Clinic is a top recognized clinical institution that provides patient care with radiotherapy and also does a lot of research in the field of clinical radiotherapy.
Introduction
Before Ana started her work at Maastro Clinic, she did her PhD at UM where her thesis was about Pre-Clinical Radiotherapy and a Bachelor in Physics at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. As an physics undergraduate, she worked in the nuclear and medical field already where she gathered a lot of experience in the fields of nuclear medicine, radiotherapy and radiation protection. This shaped her career path and drove her research interests more into the medical field. She started her PhD on pre-clinical radiotherapy in Ireland and then finished it in Maastricht.
Radiotherapy in simple terms
(Pre-clinical) radiotherapy in general has many links with biology and focuses for instance on developing a better understanding for cancer development and therapies against it.
Radiation is therefore used to kill tumor cells while preserving as much of the natural, healthy tissue and organs surrounding the tumor as possible. The treatment starts with a computer tomography (CT) scan of the patient’s body which creates a 3D image. An expert then uses the image to give detailed information of the shape, location and volume of each existing structure. After that, a treatment plan is created and optimized until it provides the best possible care for the patient. Then, treatment can begin.
Education and Work Experience
To treat patients, you need radiation oncology. This is a technology- and computer-intensive medical specialty. Ideally, we could combine computer science, statistics, and clinical knowledge to advance care which makes Ana’s work and environment very interdisciplinary. However, she is more involved in the research side than the actual patient care.
The overall goal of her and her team is to improve treatment qualities for which they introduce new technologies, automation and gather lots of data. Finally, to measure treatment quality and improve treatment plans for patients, Ana uses a lot of prediction models, artificial intelligence and data analysis in her work processes.
Also, when working with Innovation Physics the teams are multidisciplinary, consisting of radiation oncologists, radiotherapy technicians, medical physicists and what is learned and applied goes beyond Physics.
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