Hi, I'm Stefan Dorsch. I'm a Postdoc at DKFZ
and I'm working in MR-guided particle therapy in the ARTEMIS Project.
MR-guided radiotherapy in general
aims to provide a superior anatomical information about the patient. So it's even possible
to track the tumor position during the treatment itself. The tumor position may be varied by
swallowing or breathing motion of the patient.
Several devices for MR-guided radiotherapy with photons already exist commercial solutions.
However, for the particle therapy no such devices exist.
Several groups of DKFZ, the University Hospital of Heidelberg and also the Heidelberg Ionbeam
Facility (HIT) work on the development of a prototype of such a device. My own research
project aims at the investigation of the influence of the beam on the MR image quality and also the
development of new phantoms and quality assurance processes for MR-guided particle therapy.
What I really like is the vast variety and the different tasks
I have. So on the one hand I can perform measurements, develop phantoms
but as the measurements I took in the experiments also have to be evaluated, I also spent some time
on the computer. So in my point my point of view I have a really nice balance between working on the
computer, maybe also performing simulations, but also making experiments in the field.
Especially during the experiments, you can be sure that at some point something unexpected will
happen. So you really have to improvise and find a spontaneous solution for that upcoming problem.
And although our approach for the MR-guided radiotherapy relies on two medical products
meaning an already working MR scanner and also the already working beamline at the HIT facility,
even though these are medical products, the interaction of both is
not given to work at any time. So although each product individually should work perfectly fine,
in reality the integration of both covers some really interesting problems and aspects.