An important prerequisite for the current clinical implementation of the DirectSPR approach was the worldwide-first routine application of DECT for clinical proton therapy planning at the University Hospital Dresden back in spring 2015. This enabled the scientists to retrospectively evaluate the DirectSPR approach using real patient data, which was previously only possible in phantoms. By doing so, they gained valuable information about the clinical relevance of the new method. The results have also convinced industry: Siemens Healthineers has been collaborating with the researchers in Dresden since 2016 to make the DirectSPR approach available as medical product to other proton therapy centers around the world. The product development will for the first time be presented at the international meeting of the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) to be held from April 26 to 30, 2019 in Milan, Italy.

"As translational researchers we would certainly not have been successful without the excellent cooperation with the clinicians and clinical medical physicists at OncoRay," says Christian Richter. He therefore regards the interdisciplinary and cross-institutional structure of the OncoRay Center with its three partner institutes – the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf and the Technische Universität Dresden – as an essential prerequisite for the rapid translation of research results into clinical application. The close cooperation with the Heidelberg Institute for Radiooncology at the National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology also makes it possible to bundle expertise and realize projects that would not have been implemented at one of the locations alone.

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