2008 December 10 Balter talk

"Finding the truth: Surrogates and Sampling for Setup and monitoring of treatment"

James Balter, University of Michigan

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

1249 Bolyston Street, Boston MA

While dramatic improvements in imaging access and speed have occurred in the image-guided (radiation) therapy arena, the cost (in terms of time and possibly radiation dose) of acquiring verify high fidelity volume information is prohibitive for real-time monitoring for (re-)adjustment of therapy to account for patient changes between modeled and treated states. To overcome such limitations, surrogates of various forms are introduced to the process. Surrogates provide a reduced representation of the patient and typically present information in a format that is conveniently analyzed. Furthermore, extraction of surrogate information is typically faster than the initial targeting process used in planning therapy. Difficulties exist in selecting appropriate surrogates, and optimizing their relationship to the actual patient state. This talk explores these issues, including typical sources of uncertainty, the error budget involved in an image guidance process (for Radiation Oncology), and the potential impact of advanced models and use of prior information to maximize the value of surrogate measurements.