🔥BREAKING NEWS🔥

TOPAS COC is now @OpenTOPAS!
The TOPAS team has moved to a full Paul Bonsall-source approach with major upgrades.

Spread the word and check out v4.0 for Geant4 v11.1.3 at:
opentopas.github.io/index.html

Our future developments, a new forum, and documentation will be there

Well done, Marcel!

The 2nd Mayo Clinic Proton Therapy Research Workshop: New Frontier in Proton Therapy will be held between 8:00 AM and 12:30 PM PST on 4/25 and 4/26, which is an online ZOOM meeting.

Meeting ID: 921 1488 1202
Passcode: 111730

Free to everybody. More details:
#CancerResearch

Eclipse Clouds xkcd.com/2915

Idea: eduroam at all airports.

Earlier today we had another interesting lecture from Dirk De Ruyscheer on proton therapy and immunotherapy. Many lectures on immuno are too technical for me, while this one was approachable and informative also for non clinicians. #ESTROpt2024

Silvia Molinelli takes on another hot topic, i.e LET/RBE optimization. Is LET optimization for proton plans ready for prime time?

Carles Gomà is also presenting data from the upcoming EPTN guidelines on beam data acquisition for PBS. This is going to be a useful paper for the community. #ESTROpt2024

The first session this morning has physicists discussings image guidance (S Molinelli), dosimetry (C Gomà) and robustness (me). Preparing for my talk, 2 questions came to my mind: when did 'robustness' become part of our vocabulary? Why did we make it about PT and not XRT too?

Today we had yet another demonstration that one can not discuss proton therapy for more than 1h without ending up in discussions on LET&RBE. Interesting to see what will happen tomorrow when I'll discuss this topic in one of my lectures. #ESTROpt2024

[Starting from the basics] What is high or low LET? (Piero Fossati, Medaustron). #ESTROpt2024 .

Marco Krengly (UniPd, Italy) starts with a big picture overview of PT, from past to future. This figure from Yan et al (Lancet Oncol 2023; 24: e245–54) proposes an evolution that will help the 'Global democratization of proton therapy'.
Thoughts?
#ESTROpt2024

Here we go. This one of the highest number of participants we’ve ever had. A good starting point for interesting discussions in the next few days. ESTRO #Estropt2024

Why a PT course in Barcelona?
'Because it is a wonderful city'. True.
Also, 10 PT centers are going to be built in Spain in the next few years. To my knowledge, this is the largest nation-wide planning of PT in the western world. ESTRO Sant Pau - Campus Salut Barcelona #ESTROpt2024 .

There are still good conversations on #radonc and #MedPhys on this platform, so here I go.
Today I will be traveling to Barcelona for the ESTRO Course on Particle Therapy that will start on Sunday, and I'll be tweeting about it. #ESTROpt2024 Sant Pau - Campus Salut Barcelona

Thrilled to share some news! 🎉🎉 I'll be speaking at Winter Institute of Medical Physics 2024 on Feb 24 - 28, 2024. I would love to see you there! - via #Whova Event Platform
tinyurl.com/248ty5an #WIMP2024

You know you have been working too much when the first reaction to the picture below is 'This looks like a CT calibration curve'.

The best workout that few include:

Warm-up.
Find a moderate hill.
Sprint up it for ~8 seconds.
Take a long recovery (2+min).
Repeat 4 to 8 times.
Cool down.

Relatively safe speed/power development that works for endurance athletes and general fitness.