The Centre François Baclesse is pleased to announce that Aurélien Corroyer-Dulmont (right in photo), head of the facility's Artificial Intelligence (AI) department and medical imaging researcher-engineer, has been awarded the prestigious UNICANCER Innovation Prize in the "Digital Data at the service of the patient" category, at the Convention Nationale des Centres de lutte contre le cancer, held on November 13 and 14, 2024 at the Maison de la Chimie. This award recognizes its innovative project in the fields of medical physics and radiotherapy, aimed at reducing waiting times for patients by improving the availability of treatment machines.
Quality control before radiotherapy treatment
Before starting a patient's radiotherapy treatment, healthcare professionals must carry out quality controls. The aim of these checks is to ensure that the dose delivered to the patient corresponds to the prescribed dose. To this end, a detector is placed under the treatment machine in the patient's place. This verification process takes time, which makes the treatment machine less available, thus lengthening patient waiting times.
This project, carried out in collaboration with the Center's Medical Physics Department and Radiotherapy Department, offers an unprecedented solution for accurately predicting the results of quality control checks on radiotherapy plans, without the need for tests directly on the treatment machines. This advance makes equipment more available to patients, reducing waiting times for radiotherapy treatment.
"This award is an important recognition for our team and highlights the impact of new technologies on the effectiveness of care," said Aurélien Corroyer-Dulmont. "By enabling optimized resource management, our artificial intelligence solution directly contributes to improving patient access to treatment."
An innovative project at the service of patients
The main aim of the project was to develop an artificial intelligence model capable of predicting quality control results from data taken from radiotherapy plans, thus eliminating the need to interrupt the use of treatment machines. The team created AI models based on machine learning and deep hybrid learning methods, which achieved accuracies of 96% to 100% depending on the tumor types and equipment used (RapidArc© and Halcyon©). A user-friendly interface enables even non-expert users to benefit from this tool.
Concrete benefits for patients
By improving the availability of radiotherapy equipment, this solution frees up an average of seven additional treatment slots per week per machine. As a result, patients can benefit from faster treatment, an essential factor in improving their care.
"This artificial intelligence solution speeds up the treatment process without compromising safety or quality of care, directly benefiting patients,"added Dr. Corroyer-Dulmont.
Prof. Roman Rouzier, Director General of the François Baclesse Center, has been a strong supporterofthis initiative: "This project perfectly illustrates our commitment to innovation in the service of patients. We strive to optimize every stage of the patient care pathway through AI and new technologies. By improving the availability of equipment, we reduce waiting times and offer patients faster access to treatment."
A model that can be adopted by other centers and released as open source
To encourage adoption of this innovation, the Centre François Baclesse has put a simple, free interface online, accessible to other healthcare establishments via a dedicated platform. In addition, the algorithm's source code has been made available as open source on GitHub , enabling centers with the requisite skills to integrate it into their own practices.
A success already recognized by the scientific community
Dr. Corroyer-Dulmont's work has been published in internationally renowned journals such as Diagnostics and Radiotherapy and Oncology, and has been presented at major conferences including theInternational Conference on Cancer Research (ICCR 2024), and was awarded the best poster prize at the French Society of Medical Physics Day. These awards testify to the scientific quality and practical usefulness of this project.
The Centre François Baclesse is delighted with this award and will continue its efforts to promote innovation in healthcare, for the benefit of all patients.
