CONQUEST: Clinical oncology network for quality in european standards of treatment

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 95.0699

Key words (English)

Radio-oncology; prostate cancer; treatment plan optimisation; quality assurance; CT image segmentation; teleconsulting

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: HC 1009

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 4. Frame Research Programme - 1.1 Information technologies

Short description (English)

See abstract

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Prof. H. Bartelink, The Netherlands Cancer Institute

Abstract (English)

CONQUEST was part of AC:TION (Applications Cluster: Telematics In Oncology). AC:TION provided a co-ordinated oncology programme aimed at achieving major impact in the fight against cancer throughout Europe. AC:TION was formed to unite and reinforce a set of projects to facilitate cancer research and ensure that the state of the art in best practice is rapidly and consistently put to use in patient treatment and disease prevention.
The combined effect of the AC:TION projects was to promote a set of self-sustaining developments in cancer telematics, interoperating over a coordinated telematics infrastructure. The projects developed, validated and demonstrated telematics support for the entire cycle of clinical research through to consistent implementation of best practice, including structured development guidelines, training and education systems, and workstation and telemedicine technology for clinical practice and quality assurance.
Paul Scherrer Institute, together with the ETHZ were developing an 'anatomical atlas' of the prostate region. The development is based on MRI and CT images of patients and probands of the university hospital of Zurich and experience in images analysis at the ETHZ. The atlas can be used in radio-oncology for fast determination of dose volume histograms for different tissues to estimate the complication probability. Combined with the experience at PSI in particle radiotherapy, this can be used for quality assurance m radiotherapy treatment of prostate in general.
Swiss contribution:
Package for the segmentation of abdominal CT data in the frame of CONQUEST
As the first step of the development, a software package was to be created for the segmentation of the CT data, collected in the anatomical data base, which provides the base of the abdominal anatomical atlas. This tool allows to perform the data segmentation in a reasonably efficient manner in two-dimensional serial slices of the organs of interest. The second step is an automatic contouring based on basic knowledge from the CT and MRI data of patients and probands. The need of corrections by the operator of the program should be minimized. The program will also provide functions for the administration of the resulting contour stacks even in case of complex organ topology, as well as for converting the slice contours into volumetric organ representation.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 95.0699