A new project from NPRE assistant professor Angela Di Fulvio hopes to enhance the capabilities of treatment for prostate cancer.
Di Fulvio is heading up one of 20 research proposals that recently received grants from the Jump ARCHES program. The study, entitled “Point-cloud segmentation for daily adaptive prostate therapeutic planning,” hopes to make radiation therapy more targeted for people with prostate cancer.
“Prostate cancer (PCa) is a major cause of disease and morbidity amongst men, and it is the second most common cancer affecting men on a global scale,” Di Fulvio said. “The prostate is uniquely intertwined with highly radiosensitive tissues; hence, accurate treatment planning is crucial to maximize the tumor dose while sparing healthy tissues.”
“In this project, we are excited to collaborate with oncologist and clinical assistant professor Greg Hermann at OSF HealthCare to improve current algorithms used to design radiation therapy treatment plans. We hope that our work will contribute to making the treatment planning workflow more efficient and prostate radiation therapy ultimately safer and more accessible to the patient.”
The Jump ARCHES program is a partnership between OSF HealthCare and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I) and its College of Medicine in Peoria (UICOMP). The funding supports research involving clinicians, engineers and social scientists to rapidly develop technologies and devices that could revolutionize medical training and health care delivery.
In total, the funding for all the grants this fall was $1.4 million.
You can read the full press release from GCOE here.