IOMP SCHOOL WEBINARS 2025

Oncological hyperthermia has proven effective as an adjuvant to radiotherapy and chemotherapy. However, its adoption has been limited by heterogeneous heat-delivery protocols and insufficient temperature rise of tumors. Biocompatible inorganic nanoparticles offer an innovative solution — their superparamagnetic and plasmonic properties enable remote heating under magnetic fields or near-infrared light, providing superior heat control and improved thermal gradient shaping compared with conventional hyperthermia.

Simple advice on why you may want to be on social media as a scientist and how to do it. Topics include types of social media platforms, how to consume content without it becoming a time sink, how to contribute on social media, why to use multiple platforms, and the importance of being a real person on social media.

Surface Guided Radiation Therapy (SGRT) is a rapidly growing technique that uses stereo vision technology to track patients’ surface in 3D, for both setup and motion management during radiotherapy. The session covers SGRT use throughout the RT pathway, enabling precise treatments without tattoos or masks, effectiveness of non-coplanar treatments, significance of beam hold latency, and the principles of Cherenkov imaging combined with SGRT for real-time visualization of dose delivery.

Adaptive proton therapy (APT) aims to optimize treatment by adapting to anatomical and physiological changes during therapy. APT workflows rely on 3D-imaging, deformable image registration, and dose accumulation. Despite challenges from proton range uncertainties and resource demands, adaptive strategies offer improved clinical outcomes and reduced toxicity in anatomically complex tumour sites.

This presentation addresses the challenges of a proton therapy project in Brazil, covering reimbursement, legislation, clinical protocols, and project management — and its impact on society.

This presentation explores applications of AI in healthcare with a focus on radiotherapy, highlighting the key challenges and open questions that must be addressed to enable widespread adoption of AI in this field.

Radformation addresses the challenges of breast cancer treatment management with a suite of automated tools: AutoContour accelerates contouring, EZFluence simplifies 3DCRT planning, ClearCheck automates plan evaluation, and ClearCalc provides fast secondary dose calculations. Collectively these solutions improve planning efficiency, reduce errors, and support high-quality radiation therapy.

SunCHECK® unifies QA processes with a single database, centralized data, and standardized workflows. Automation reduces time on repetitive tasks while enabling remote work and oversight. By analyzing QA data, users can identify trends — such as machine performance issues or training needs — that drive continuous improvement and elevate patient care.

Physics has been and remains an instigator and integral component of radiology, radiation oncology, and nuclear medicine. This lecture offers a holistic view on the role of physics in medicine and delineates the forefront of the Medical Physics profession in terms of its science, clinical practice, educational endeavors, and professional aspirations.

This debate critically examines the strengths and limitations of AI in medical X-ray dose estimation, dose optimization, quality assurance, and clinical decision-making. Panelists identify key advantages AI offers in dose estimation, recognize potential risks and interpretability challenges, discuss irreplaceable contributions of human judgment, and explore strategies for integrating AI-powered dosimetry into clinical practice.

This debate examines whether AI serves as an empowering assistant to medical physics or if its advancement might eventually redefine traditional roles. Topics include AI innovations in image segmentation, treatment planning optimization, and quality assurance, alongside concerns about diminishing hands-on expertise and clinical decision-making.

AI and ML are revolutionizing medical physics in both diagnostic and therapeutic areas. This presentation showcases current applications of AI/ML in medical physics and highlights the necessity of updating curricula to incorporate AI as a key component.

AI in medical imaging involves development of quantitative analyses for task-based discovery, predictive modeling, and robust clinical translation. This presentation gives a perspective on how AI could impact the education and clinical practice of medical physicists, including how AI could potentially change current practice.

This talk presents potential legal and ethical challenges posed by the use of AI in medicine, focusing on AI in healthcare delivery and touching on issues relevant to AI in health research.

Integrating AI into medicine introduces ethical challenges including data privacy, autonomy, trust, and accountability. Algorithmic and data biases may perpetuate healthcare disparities. This talk introduces ethical frameworks and guidelines for AI deployment and provides examples of ethical issues in medical imaging and medical devices.

This presentation explores the intersection of AI and ethics in medical physics as advanced through IAEA activities. It outlines the evolving roles of clinically qualified medical physicists in safely implementing AI-based tools, emphasizing theoretical foundations, risk management, quality assurance, and ethical safeguards.

Recent advances in instrumentation and radiopharmaceutical therapy (RPT) present new opportunities for nuclear medicine. AI can assist in optimizing signal processing and image reconstruction, enhancing imaging quality while reducing radiation exposure. It can also improve diagnosis and prognosis, and support the development of treatment planning tools for RPT including simplified dosimetry and pre-therapy dose prediction.

An overview of the history and growth of women medical physicists in the US with statistics from AAPM. Although the number of women continues increasing, their representation in leadership positions is not keeping pace, and salary surveys show evidence of a gender pay gap. The talk discusses contributing factors and highlights the work of the AAPM Women’s Professional Subcommittee (WPSC).

The representation of women in medical physics in Asia has grown significantly, yet challenges remain in achieving gender equity in leadership and research. Drawing on experiences from SEAFOMP, AFOMP, and international collaborations, this talk discusses how regional organizations empower women through mentorship, networking, and professional development.

A talk on the unique challenges and exciting opportunities of being an early-career female medical physicist in Europe, covering resilience, adaptability, and how humanitarian work can strengthen networks and build leadership skills.

Online adaptive CT-based radiotherapy has rapidly expanded, combining CBCT, automatic contouring, and automatic plan optimisation. This complex technique requires robust quality assurance. PTW has developed the RUBY adaptive phantom to address this challenge, with a new insert facilitating the insertion of different organ sets and positioning of anthropomorphic structures. The webinar demonstrates a possible workflow of an online adaptive end-to-end test using the Varian ETHOS system.

Surface-guided radiation therapy (SGRT) has evolved into standard-of-care in modern radiotherapy. This presentation describes the testing, implementation, and clinical evaluation of the novel SGRT system LUNA 3D (LAP, Germany) installed on a C-arm linac. Acceptance tests were implemented according to the ESTRO-ACROP guideline. All test results lie within the manufacturer’s specifications and ESTRO guideline tolerances.