"The development of MR-linac has truly been a global effort, and the participation of clinicians and scientists from five additional cancer centers in this year's meeting has underscored the value of including insights from a broad array of experts," said Christopher Schultz, MD, FACR, Medical College of Wisconsin Professor and Chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology, at the Froedtert & MCW Cancer Network and Chair of the Elekta MR-linac Consortium. "As MR-linac advances toward the clinic, we will continue to seek input from radiation oncologists, medical physicists and imaging experts around the world. We believe that this broad and inclusive approach is the most effective way to ensure that our vision for MR/RT meets the needs of patients, physicians, and cancer care centers."
Key discussion points of the Consortium meeting were:
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Planning pre-clinical and clinical studies to establish the added value of MR/RT in specific tumor types and cancer indications. These include indications commonly treated with radiation therapy as well as cancer types for which radiation therapy is not typically used due to difficulties in discriminating between the tumor and surrounding soft tissue.
UMCU highlighted its successful first-in-man treatments on Elekta's MR-linac system and presented the accuracy results to the group.
Updates from consortium centers on their volunteer imaging programs.
"MR-guided radiotherapy has the potential to transform the treatment of cancer by enabling more precise, adaptive tumor targeting, and we are excited about helping to bring this important advancement to patients," said Michael Milosevic, MD, Director of Research, Radiation Medicine Program, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Vice-Chair (Research) Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Toronto. "The Consortium has been very effective at promoting collaborative innovation in MR-guided radiotherapy and we look forward to continuing to move this evolving area of radiation oncology and precision cancer medicine forward."
"The MR-linac consortium together with the five new centers is an impressive novel network within the radiation oncology community," said Daniel Zips, MD, Chair, Professor Radiation Oncology at Tübingen University Hospital. "Mastering the new technology towards innovation in radiation therapy requires joint efforts and combined expertise. The Tübingen group is happy to contribute to this endeavor which will bring radiation oncology to the next level."
