HIRO: News 2022

In late November and in early December 2022, the different workshops in Chile took successfully place. Due to the hybrid mode of some workshops, participants from around the globe as well as mainly from South America attended the courses. Thanks to our speakers not only from Heidelberg, but also from Tübingen and Dresden (both Germany) as well as Paris (France), Rome (Italy) and Lausanne (Switzerland), actual reseach was presented and discussed with participants.

All workshops were hosted under the auspices of the "HIRO" as part of our long-lasting cooperation with Chile which is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education.

Photo galleries of the workshops are available here:

Photos of the scientific workshops at the HCLA

Photos of the hands-on workshop at UC

Photos of the workshops at CAS

The Live Online Phase of the Courses in the Field of Particle Therapy successcully took place from Nov. 20th until Nov. 25th 2022. Lectures and interactive sessions with students and participants from around the globe (e.g from the US, China, Europe and even Australia) were part of this Live Online Phase. Thanks to the great engagement of each participant, we could easily host these sessions and we really look forward to the next round in 2023 (probably mid. Oct until end of Nov. 2023).

We would also like to thank the societies (such as ESTRO, EFOMP, IOMP and DEGRO Accademy) for their endorsements and accreditations.

Just click here for further information (e.g. new dates in 2023).

On Nov. 16th 2022, Prof. Oliver Jäkel (Head of the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology at DKFZ) as well as Dr. Semi Harrabi (Senior Physician at the Deparment of Radiation Oncology at Heidelberg University Hospital) were invited for an online guest lecture via Zoom about the topic "Particle Radiotherapy" at the Clínica Alemana de Santiago de Chile (CAS). Prof. Jäkel introduced the history of particle therapy and presented the physical advantanges and challenges. Dr. Harrabi continued with the clinical rationale as well as the clinical benefits of particle therapy.

In late November and in early December 2022, several scientific workshops will take place as hybrid events in Chile with our local partners. All courses are hosted under the auspices of the Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO) and offer online access via Zoom.

First, the scientific workshop about "Emerging Techniques in Radiotherapy" will be hosted in cooperation with the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (UC). Furthermore, additional scientific workshops will be held at the Clínica Alemana Santiago (CAS).

Participation is free of charge for registered students. More information about all courses is available here.

On October 27th 2022, the second part of the HIRO-OncoRay Lecture Series (lasting from Oct. 22 until Jun. 2023) is initiated by the first live online lecture via Zoom. The Lecture Series is jointly hosted by HIRO and OncoRay from Dresden and is dedicated to employees and students of both partners as well as other DKTK members. The lecture series is not open to the public.

More information about the lecture series is available here.

During the last week of Sep. 2022, we could host the attendance phase and Live Online Phase of the 4th Summer School in Medical Physics with all participants from around the globe. 22 participants attended online via Zoom, 24 participants were in Heidelberg for all lectures and sessions.

Click here to get some impressions from the attendance phase in Heidelberg!

On Sep. 22nd 2022, Alina Elter, PhD, has been awarded the 1^st Behnken-Berger Prize for 2022 for her dissertation about the "Development of end-to-end tests for online adaptive magnetic resoncance-guided radiotherapy".

Furthermore, we are very happy about two additional prizes: Margareta Metzner received the Master's Thesis Prize of the DGMP for her Master's Thesis about Helium-beam radiography using thin silicon pixel detectors: establishment of calibration curves and quantitative imaging of an anthropomorphic head phantom". Jennifer Hardt got the Poster Prize of the PTCOG 2022 for her poster about "Towards a generalized (N)TCP optimization framework across modalities using classical and machine learning models".

Congratulations!

It is with great pleasure that we announced the recently approved Research Grant funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; Germany) for the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology. The project entitled "Reducing secondary cancer risk by measuring neutron exposure in light ion beam radiotherapy" will provide valuable information of particular interest when paediatric patients or pregnant women are treated. The Principal Investigator of the project is Dr. José Vedelago, a member of the division since 2020, and the secondary neutron measurements will be done at the Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center (HIT; Germany). This application has two international cooperation partners, the group headed by Dr. Eduardo Yukihara from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI; Switzerland), and the team led by Dr. Mark Akselrod at Landauer (United States). Further information can be found on the DFG website here.

Together with the University of California, San Francisco (Prof. Faddegon), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley (Prof. Mao) and Loma Linda University (Prof. Schulte), the division successfully applied for a R01 research grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US. For the next five years until 2027, this collaboration will research novel particle treatment planning strategies basing on nanodosimetric physical quantities, called "Ionization Detail", to better utilize and mitigate the varying biological response of tissue to the ionization structure of particle beams. In our department, Prof. Oliver Jäkel (Principal Investigator) will lead the subproject, supported by Dr. Niklas Wahl (Co-Investigator) and Prof. Christian Karger (Significant Contributor). Further information can be found on the NIH website here.

In Nov./Dec. 2022, the next round of the virtual courses (in German only) "Virtuellen Aktualisierungskurse zum Erhalt der Fachkunde im Strahlenschutz nach § 48 StrlSchV" takes place.

Registration is now open until Nov. 02nd 2022!

More information is available here.

On August 24th 2022 four representatives from the Clínica Alemana de Santiago de Chile visited the DKFZ:

Prof. Dr. Andrés Maturana, Head of the Department of Academic Development and Research
Dr. Luis Moya, Head of Clínica Alemana International Cooperation
José Manuel Munita, Director of the Institute for Research at the Medical Faculty (ICIM), Clínica Alemana Universidad del Desarrollo
Susana Dörr, Head of Continuing Medical Education and Agreements

At the beginning of the visit, Prof. Baumann welcomed the guests and they discussed the next steps of the cooperation between both institutes in the area of Radiation Therapy, Radiobiology and Education and Training. Additionally, new projects could also be identified.

The Chilean guests visited then the MR Linac at the University Hopsital as well as the Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Center (HIT). Further discussions and talks about "Clinical Studies at the DKFZ" (Dr. Beuthien-Baumann, (Division of Radiology) or the current 3D printing techniques for Radiation Therapy (Gernot Echner, Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology) took place at the new building "Imaging and Radiooncology", complemented by a guided tour to the PET-CT and PET-MR devices in the same building.

The visit is an important part of the long-lasting cooperation between both institutes. As one result, a scientific workshop will be jointly organized at the beginning of December 2022 at the Clínica Alemana in Santiago de Chile. More information about this event will be soon available here.

From June 22nd to June 24th 2022 Medical Physics students from the National Columbian University in Bogota visited the Divison of Medical Physics in Radiation Therapy at the DKFZ.

During the first day, the students were introduced into the research topics and areas of the division. Furthermore, they visited the research center "Imaging and Radiooncology". During the remaining days, they got an insight into the Division of Medical Physics in Radiology and the imaging techniques such as PET, CT or MRI used for research in this division. They also visited the 7-Tesla-MR-Building. Finally, an interactive session about Optimization in Radiation Therapy using the open source software matRad concluded the visit at the DKFZ.

During and after the sessions, the study group had the opportunity to meet national and international students at the participating divisions at the DKFZ and to get an idea about education and training in the field of Radiation Therapy.

The registration for the Virtual Courses in the Field of Particle Therapy is open until Oct. 06th 2022. The courses are aimed to physicians and Medical Physics Experts who want to gain the "Fachkunde Partikeltherapie". Furthermore, national and international students and young scientists are welcome to register as well.

More information about the courses and the registration is available here.

At the end of her stay of 6 months at the Department of Radiooncology and Radiotherapy (Head: Prof. Debus) at Heidelberg University Hospital, Camila Rioseco Mora from Chile presented her final talk about her experience in the Medical Physics Group of the MR-guided Radiotherapy, led by Dr. Sebastian Klüter, online via Zoom. She finished her talk with an overview about her ideas that she would like to implement once she returns to Chile.

Her visit was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) as part of the project "Heidelberg Center Latin America" (HCLA), Center of Excellence in Research and Teaching" (project "Medical Physics").

In April 2022 Susana Dörr (Head of the Department Furher Education and International Cooperation at the Clinica Alemana in Santiago de Chile) visited the DKFZ and the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology (Head: Prof. Jäkel).

During her stay she met Dr. Simone Barthold-Beß and Marcel Schäfer from Prof. Jäkel's Division to discuss new teaching activities and further projects in the field of education and training in Medical Physics to strengthen the existing cooperation between both institutes. At the end of 2022 a scientific workshop is scheduled to be held as hybrid event in Chile. More information about this and other activities in Chile is available online here.

Furthermore, a guided tour to the new building "Imaging and Radiooncology" as well as to the DKFZ main building concluded the visit of Susana Dörr.

The registration of our 4th Summer School in Medical Physics 2022 about the topic Radiobiology and Radiobiological Modeling for Radiotherapy is now opened! The course is divided into an online phase from Sep. 05th - Sep. 25th 2022 and an attendance phase from Sep. 26th - Sep. 30th 2022 in Heidelberg. The attendance phase is designed as hybrid event. Thus all sessions are available as Live Online Phase via Zoom. Participants can decide to attend the course 100% virtually or online and on-site in Heidelberg

The summer school is dedicated to students on different levels (BSc, MSc or PhD) as well as young Post-Docs. Participation is free of charge!

More information (e.g. program and registration) is available here.

From March 16th to 18th 2022, Dr. Andres Cordova (Head of the Radiotherapy Department at the Clinica Alemana in Santiago de Chile) visited the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Therapy (Head: Prof. Oliver Jäkel). The goal of his visit was to discuss new research projects and workshops to be held end of 2022 in Chile as well as further topics of this long-lasting cooperation.

Two colleagues, Dr. Daniel Ernst (Haematologist) and Mirenxu Iruretagoyena (Immunologist) also visited the DKFZ together with Dr. Cordova. They are interest in a further cooperation in the area of Car-T-Cells. At the end of their stay, all guests from Chile also visited the Morszeck Preclinical Trial Unit (PCTU) together with its head, Dr. Ina Kurth from the Division of Radiooncology / Radiobiology (Head. Prof. Michael Baumann).

Two divisions of the HIRO are part of the event Science in the City (in German) in the old town of Heidelberg.

On Feb. 17th 2022 the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology (Head: Prof. Dr. Oliver Jäkel (E040)) will be explaining the process of radiation therapy ("What happens during radiation therapy? - From therapy planning to radiation") as well as current research projects. 

On Feb. 22nd 2022 New Methods in Radiation Therapy will be presented by the Division of Biomedical Physics in Radiation Oncology (Head: Prof. Dr. Joao Seco (E041)).

In May 2022, the next round of the virtual courses (in German only) "Virtuellen Aktualisierungskurse zum Erhalt der Fachkunde im Strahlenschutz nach § 48 StrlSchV" takes place. Registration is now open!

More information is available here.