News 2025

We are delighted that the project “InViMo for in-vivo particle therapy monitoring” has been selected as one of CERN's knowledge transfer highlights for 2024. The project was developed under the leadership of Dr. Mária Martišíková (head of the research group Novel Detection Techniques for Ion Beams in the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, led by Prof. Oliver Jäkel) in collaboration with the Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center (HIT) and Heidelberg University Hospital. A big thank you and congratulations to everyone involved in the project for this great achievement.

More information is available at https://report2024-kt.web.cern.ch/improving-head-tumour-radiotherapy/ oder in the paper.

The research group Medical Engineering (led by Armin Runz) of the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology (led by Prof. Oliver Jäkel) took part in the Girl's and Boy's Day, which was held on April 3, 2025, at the German Cancer Research Center. Schoolgirls from Heidelberg and the surrounding area visited the working group and learned how 3D-printed organs can be produced for research in radiation therapy. Other stops on this Girls' Day included the DKFZ IT Core Facility and the 7-Tesla MRI scanner in the Division of Medical Physics in Radiology (led by Prof. Mark Ladd). The students participating in Boys' Day visited the Press and Public Relations Department, the library, and the Central Animal Facility.

The registration for the Hybrid Courses in the Field of Particle Therapy opens on April 15th 2025. You can register until Sep. 29th 2025. The courses are aimed to physicians and Medical Physics Experts who want to gain the “Fachkunde Partikeltherapie”. Furthermore, national and international students and scientists are welcome to register as well. 

We are happy to offer free course participation to a limited number of participants. More information about the courses, the registration and the free course participation is available here. 

What exactly are we working on in the field of medical physics? What research questions are explored during a master's or doctoral thesis? What does a Postdoc actually research? And what does it look like in our office or laboratory? 

We try to answer these questions in our short video interviews. Click here to watch the videos with young researchers. 

We are very happy to announce our Hybrid Summer School in Medical Physics about Functional Imaging. The workshop is subdivided into an online phase of two to three weeks, followed by the hybrid attendance phase at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg and on Zoom from September 17th to September 19th 2025. The course is designed for students (BSc, MSc, PhD or MD), postdocs as well as young scientists or clinical trainees. 

More information follows soon on the course website here. 

The registration for the FLASH Workshop 2025 about "The Role of Oxygen in FLASH Radiation Therapy" taking place from July 1st to July 3rd 2025 in Heidelberg at the German Cancer Research Center is open. The workshop is organized by Prof. Dr. Joao Seco under the auspices of the Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology. 

Talks by invited speakers will be supplemented by talks and posters of attendees. Therefore, participants can submit abstracts to actively participate in the workshop.

Early Bird Registration Deadline: April 28th 2025

Abstract deadline: April 28th 2025

Registration deadline: June 16th 2025

Further information: www.dkfz.de/flash_workshop2025

We would like to thank our invited speakers and our participants for such a nice matRad User Meeting and Hackathon. It was really a pleasure to welcome everyone from February 17 to 21 2025 in Heidelberg in the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology at DKFZ. 

Congratulations to Remo Cristoforetti from DKFZ for receiving the Creativity Award and to Eric Christiansen from Canada for receiving the Coding Award. 

Click here for more information about the meeting. 

This interdisciplinary starter project will explore visualization concepts and feasibility for a "digital patient twin" - a browser-based software tool that allows patients to access all essential information in radiation therapy, such as imaging data, therapeutic dose distributions and medical decisions. 

The exploratory short-term project, lead by Dr. Martin Niklas and Dr. Kristina Giske, is an example for the excellent integration of different disciplines of modern healthcare at DKFZ combining radiotherapy, radiology, clinical and computational medical physics, AI applications, as well as IT and software engineering aspects. 

More details are available on NCT page and on the website of the research group “Computational Patient Models”.

Annika Schlechter, a master’s student of the research group “Novel Detection Techniques for Ion Beams” in the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, was awarded the Christoph Schmelzer Prize of the Association for the Promotion of Tumor Therapy with Heavy Ions for her for her outstanding master thesis about “2.5D imaging: Accessing 3D information of a 2D ion-beam radiograph: Accessing 3D information of a 2D ion-beam radiograph)”.

Using an anthropomorphic phantom, Annika Schlechter was the first to experimentally demonstrate that information about the third dimension, i.e. about the depth of potential anatomical changes within the patient, can be extracted from a 2D ion-beam radiograph. She was able to convincingly verify that the accuracy of the depth determination can achieve clinical relevance.

More information about the ceremony is available here. 

From December 12 to 14, 2025, the “PCSM School in Adaptive Radiation Therapy (ART)” took place in Bankok at our cooperation partner “Princess Srisavangavadhana College of Medicine, Chulabhorn Royal Academy (CRA)”. Prof. Jäkel (Head of the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology) and Dr. Fabian Weykamp (Senior Physician of the Clinical Cooperation Unit Radiation Therapy) took part as invited speakers, together with Prof. Richter from OncoRay in Dresden.

The “PCSM School in Adaptive Radiation Therapy (ART)” is another visible component of our successful cooperation with Thailand. Further information on the PCSM School program can be found here.