The direct way from MRI to radiation treatment

This year‘s award winners are Dr. Tilmann Bostel and Asscociate Professor (PD) Dr. Florian Sterzing from the Clinical Cooperation Unit Radiation Oncology and Dr. Asja Pfaffenberger from the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Therapy. They will receive the award in recognition of their cross-disciplinary project on MR-guided radiotherapy planning.

In a cross-disciplinary collaboration, the two physicians Bostel and Sterzing and physicist Asja Pfaffenberger have developed a positioning system that makes it possible to transfer patients directly from an MRI device to a linear accelerator (LINAC) where they receive radiation treatment.

MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is considered an ideal imaging technology to plan radiation therapy, to verify a patient’s position immediately before radiation treatment, or to document the course of radiation therapy. MRI attains much better soft tissue contrast than commonly used computer tomography (CT) and additionally does not involve radiation exposure.

To date, experimental hybrid devices that combine LINAC and MRI exist only in two places in the world. However, they are not being used yet to treat patients. The shuttle system developed by the three award-winning scientists will now make it possible to transfer patients directly from an MRI device to a neighboring radiotherapy unit without repositioning. The system guarantees that the patient's position remains exactly identical throughout imaging and irradiation. This makes it possible to localize tumors and healthy tissue very precisely over the whole treatment period in order to adjust radiation therapy individually if the tumor has shifted since the last treatment or if its size has changed.

“Close collaboration across various disciplines has always been a characteristic of our Research Program,” says coordinator Prof. Heinz-Peter Schlemmer. “Radiologists, nuclear medicine specialists, radiation therapists, medical physicists, chemists and computer scientists are all collaborating closely here to address medically relevant issues. And thanks to our excellent precision engineers, we can even produce our own prototype devices if needed.”

This cross-disciplinary collaboration is also the prerequisite for the Roland Ernst Prize, whose statutes require a cross-departmental project that should also have the potential for translation into clinical applications.

Established in 1980 by Heidelberg construction entrepreneur Roland Ernst, the Roland Ernst Foundation supports medical research, particularly the DKFZ Research Program “Radiological Diagnostics and Therapy” (now: Imaging and Radiooncology). In addition, the foundation also sponsors art and culture projects.