PhD defence A.W. (Abdul) Sharfo

Automated treatment planning has been proposed as a tool to substantially increase radiotherapy plan quality and reduce planning workload. In Rotterdam, Erasmus-iCycle has been developed for fully-automated multi-criterial optimization (MCO) of intensity profiles and beam angles. Erasmus-iCycle generates for each patient a single Pareto-optimal plan. For each tumor site, a configuration of the system is needed to ensure that these plans are also clinically relevant. 

In this thesis, automated planning with Erasmus-iCycle was validated for several tumor sites by comparisons with clinical manual planning, and manual planning by an expert planner in the absence of time limitations. In all cases, automatically generated plans had large dosimetric advantages compared to manual planning. Automated planning was also successfully applied for development of novel treatment techniques and for 'bias-free' comparisons of techniques.

Due to corona, the PhD defences do not take place publicly in the usual way in the Senate Hall or in the Professor Andries Querido Room. The candidates will defend their dissertation either in a small group or online.