On April 24, 2024, the 10th Medicine-engineering Salon and the 190th Youth Academic Salon of CBEIS was held in the Zhouyiqing Suite of Yuquan Campus, Zhejiang University. A presentation on the topic of “Development and Future of Radiotherapy Technology” was given by Dr. Sun Xiaonan. Lin Hui, Vice Dean of CBEIS, presided over the event.
Xiaonan Sun, PhD in Oncology and a Ph.D. supervisor, is the Director and chief physician at the Department of Radiation Therapy, Sir-Run-Run-Shaw-Hospital affiliated with the Zhejiang University School of Medicine. He holds more than 10 academic positions, including member of the Radiobiology Group of Chinese Society of Radiology, and deputy head of the First Brain Metastatic Tumour Group of Chinese Society of Neuro-oncology of CACA. He specialises in radiotherapy-based comprehensive treatment and Concurrent Chemotherapy for various malignant tumours, and is proficient in radiotherapy techniques such as CRT, IMRT and SBRT for malignant tumours of the head and neck, thorax and abdomen, and pelvic cavity.
In this salon, Dr. Sun firstly introduced the concept of radiotherapy, explaining its definition, process, development history, and the medical staffs and their responsibilities of the radiotherapy department, focusing on the cutting-edge technologies of radiotherapy, such as 3D-CRT, IMRT, VMAT, TOMO, γ-knife, X-knife, and the use of high-energy physical rays like proton rays to kill cancer cells, as well as the multi-omics visualization and precision medicine. Combined with the actual medical practice, Dr Sun introduced the initial exploration results of Medicine, Engineering, and Informatics Technology in radiotherapy treatment and put forward the challenges of radiotherapy in the future: how to improve the precision of target delineation, optimize the dose distribution and individualized treatment to make radiotherapy more accurate; how to optimize the combined treatment plan to maximize the synergy of radiotherapy and drugs; how to build a big data follow-up system.
During the Q&A session, the students were highly engaged and had a lively discussion based on their own researches around the proton therapy technology, cytokinestorme production through high-energy tumorablation, domestically produced Heavy Ion Radiotherapy, Bragg peak distribution, and energy differences in radiation diagnosis and treatment. In response to these issues, Dr. Sun shared his practical experience and also pointed out the urgent problems that need to be solved in clinical practice.
