Advances in MRI-Guided Radiotherapy of Cancer
Member-Initiated Symposium

ORGANIZERS: Simon Robinson, Gene Kim, Chloé Najac

Tuesday, 14 May 2019

Session Number: MIS-08

Overview
This Symposium was proposed by the MR of Cancer study group.

The integration of diagnostic MRI scanners with state-of-the-art linear accelerators (MR-Linac) is transforming image-guided radiotherapy for cancer patients. The exquisite soft tissue contrast afforded by MRI represents a major advance on conventional CT technologies, facilitating adaptive treatment strategies for radiotherapy planning. The ability to image patients daily during treatment without delivering additional radiation dose will provide significantly improved accuracy in treatment adaptation, through optimizing dose delivery to the tumor, whilst reducing irradiation of adjacent organs-at-risk to reduce toxicity. In addition to anatomical imaging for real-time guidance of radiotherapy, a number of functional MRI methods are being implemented on the MR-Linac platforms to provide additional information on the tumor microenvironment (e.g. cell death, proliferation, hypoxia). Such functional image-guided radiotherapy may ultimately be used to identify and target biologically-relevant tumor subvolumes, as well as for monitoring treatment response. Current imaging developments and challenges in the use of the MR-Linac systems, as well as initial clinical experiences, will be presented by experts (2 basic scientists and 2 clinicians) actively
engaged in the use of this cutting-edge technology. The session will complement Educational courses in MR Image-Guided
Therapy, Biological Evaluation with MRI, and MR Physics & Techniques for Clinicians, and be of interest to SMRT.

Target Audience
MRI engineers and physicists, pulse sequence developers/programmers, cancer physicians, and basic scientists.

Educational Objectives
As a result of attending this course, participants should be able to:
- Recognize the development of MR-Linac platforms for real-time image-guided radiotherapy;
- Appraise the adaptive treatment strategies afforded by MR-Linac platforms for improved radiotherapy planning;
- Describe the potential of functional image-guided radiotherapy to target biologically-relevant tumor sub-volumes, and for monitoring treatment response; and
- Recall current clinical developments, experiences and challenges with use of the commercially available MR-Linac systems.