FOCUS project

Innovative planning and guidance system for focal prostate brachytherapy

Prostate cancer is by far the most common cancer for men. The search for improved solutions for the treatment of prostate cancer remains a major societal challenge. This issue is emphasized by the fact that constant improvement of prostate cancer diagnostic tools allows detecting highly localized and small tumors at early age. Focal brachytherapy is a localized treatment, restricted to cancerous zones, with the objective of preserving healthy functional tissues inside and outside of the organ, and thus the quality of life of the patient. However, the current brachytherapy procedures are not fully exploiting the latest state of the art in dosimetry calculation, guidance and imaging capabilities, and thus do not yet meet the requirements for a robust focal treatment. 

The ambition of this project is to provide an innovative focal brachytherapy system, less invasive, with fewer side effects, in rupture with current brachytherapy procedures, capable of accurately irradiating very localized areas, while significantly decreasing the time of the intervention. To achieve such innovative focal brachytherapy system, new guidance system has to be developed in order to control with accuracy the instrument placement during the intervention. A specific challenge is also the accuracy of the dosimetry. This calculation, already critical in global brachytherapy, is even more important when it comes to target small areas. We propose developing the first clinical treatment planning system that integrate edema prostate model and a fast and personalized Monte Carlo dosimetry calculation on GPU.

This project FOCUS is funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR-16-CE19-0011)