Radiation therapy is a critical part of combinatorial cancer care. The dose must be sufficient enough to kill the targeted tumor, but also minimal enough to ensure that the radiation does not cause collateral damage to nearby healthy tissues and organs. These treatments are very precise and individualized. Each person's unique medical history and needs factors in. For example, a patient who has both bladder cancer and failing kidneys will have a specific radiation plan to avoid further kidney damage. Cancer doctors (oncologists) have an extensive team that helps create these radiation plans, called directives, but estimating the dose is tedious, iterative, time-consuming and inaccurate. A do...

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Radiation therapy is a critical part of combinatorial cancer care. The dose must be sufficient enough to kill the targeted tumor, but also minimal enough to ensure that the radiation does not cause collateral damage to nearby healthy tissues and organs. These treatments are very precise and individualized. Each person's unique medical history and needs factors in. For example, a patient who has both bladder cancer and failing kidneys will have a specific radiation plan to avoid further kidney damage. Cancer doctors (oncologists) have an extensive team that helps create these radiation plans, called directives, but estimating the dose is tedious, iterative, time-consuming and inaccurate. A doctor can spend 10+ hours creating a single patient's directive and the clinical team could take 24-48 hrs too finalize a plan. Our team is building RadOnc-AI, a software that uses a form of artificial intelligence (AI) called deep learning to fully automate this directive planning. The AI uses the person's medical data and tumor images to predict the optimal radiation dose. Cancer patients treated at larger hospitals with specialized doctors tend to have better outcomes than those treated at small clinics, who have a reduced survival rate of 20%. We are asking for CPRIT funding to build out our software so that patients across Texas and the country can receive the same equitable quality treatment plans.

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