New Annual Event - The World Championship of Treatment Planning
Summary of the ProKnow Plan Study Program
ProKnow’s plan study program features of series of objective treatment planning studies designed for scientific research, quality assessment, and continual improvement. Data, results, and ideas are shared with the goal to build an international community of radiation oncology professionals who want to compare methods and modalities and to share best practices.
ProKnow provides several new public plan studies each year. Participation is highly encouraged for any and all dosimetrists, physicists, therapists, physicians, and students around the world. Your participation is rewarded through our Pride of Workmanship program, and you can track your activity and accomplishments using the Achievement System integrated with your personal ProKnow account.
Announcing an Annual “World Championships” Competition!
We are excited to announce that, starting in 2018 and recurring each year, one unique plan study will be treated as a true competition. Given the size and span of the ProKnow user base (now over 3500 users from across the world), we will dub this the “World Championships of Treatment Planning.”
The World Championships will be spirited and fun, with two primary aims:
- To determine which planner and planning system can produce the highest quality plan in an aggressive and limited time frame, and
- To identify which, if any, TPS auto-planning solutions are capable of producing plans that rival the best manual plans in the same or less time.
How will the World Championships work?
This annual event will be very unique, with quite a few differences compared to standard plan studies. Here is a summary of how the World Championships will work.
- This event will have a challenging time limit of four hours from when the study opens (i.e. patient images and structures available for download) to when data collection ends (i.e. final plan and dose scored and submitted).
- There will be three separate event times (i.e. time zones) in one 24-hour period to allow for international scheduling and participation. Each participant will register in advance, selecting one of the three event times. (NOTE: This was not implemented this year as we only ran one official start and end time for all. Separate event times will be in consideration for next year – Updated 3/22/18)
- All anatomy structures will be provided including targets, with the exception of one or more critical organs-at-risk (OAR) that the participants will be asked to contour themselves as part of the timed exercise. This adds a new dimension to the event, namely that speed and accuracy of contouring one or more OARs will be integrated into the study.
- A description of the body site and prescription, along with the plan quality scoring algorithm will be published in advance so there are no surprises. Metrics and minimal objectives will be based off a protocol, while ideal values per metric will be derived in part using pre-planning feasibility analyses for critical OARs.
Awards Ceremony
Winners will be announced approximately 24 hours after the event is closed via video webcast. The exact date and time of this awards ceremony will be published with the full event details.
Winners will be tracked in categories (such as per modality and per planning system), and one overall winner. To qualify as an overall winner, a full pre-treatment QA analysis (measurement vs. calculation) must be submitted within 12 hours of the event start time.
Symposium Presentation
A more in-depth presentation of results will be presented in person at the 2018 QA and Dosimetry Symposium (QADS) on March 10, 2018, in Orlando, Florida. A recording of this presentation will be posted on the “Learn” module for this plan study after the live presentation.
2018 World Championship Event Details
Details – including schedule of events, body site, protocol, and other specifics – for the first annual World Championships of Treatment Planning will be released in January, 2018. The actual competition day will be during the last week of February, or very early March.
Stay tuned for more information!
Other 2018 Plan Studies
For those of you already wondering about the other plan studies for 2018, we have an exciting lineup forming already.
For the first study of 2018, we will again be helping with the Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) for TROG, and the plan study will be a challenging SRS case with five target volumes in the brain. This study will launch in mid-December 2017 with submissions closing at the end of January 2018. The results will be presented at the 2018 ASM in Hobart, Tasmania, in March 2018.
The third study of the year will be the AAMD plan study, which will be a breast case with IMC. The data collection timeframe will be during April and May, 2018, with results presented at the AAMD meeting in June.
The fourth and final plan study of the year will take place in the fall or winter of 2018, details TBA.