ESTRO Annual Report 2019

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2. European Particle Therapy Network (EPTN)

EPTN, a task force of ESTRO, was created to promote clinical and research collab- oration between the rapidly increasing numbers of European particle therapy (PT) centres and to ensure that PT be- came integrated in the overall radiation oncology community. Threemore newPT facilities have begun operating since the last meeting of the EPTN in London on 28 June: Denmark, The Netherlands and the UK. The EPTN took part in the scientific programme of ESTRO 38. EPTN was represented at the Particle Therapy Co-operative Groupmeeting (PTCOG-58), which was held in June 2019 in Manchester, UK. Highlights of the 2019 activities of the ESTRO working parties (WP): WP1: Clinical The main activities of working party 1 (WP1) are directed towards establishing the content of prospective data registries at a European level. The first consensus meeting of the WP took place on 5 September 2019. ESTRO and EORTC have set up a collaborative venture, EORTC-ESTRO Radiation Infrastructure for Europe or E2-RADIatE to form the EPTN prospective data registry. WP2: Dose assessment, quality assurance, dummy runs, technology inventory The WP2 held two workshops in 2019: one in March and the second in October. The focus of the workshops were (i) quality analysis (QA)/ equipment survey, (ii) reference and absolute dosimetry and (iii) dosimetry audits.

Fifth annual meeting on 9 April 2019

Science & Dissemination

44 Participants

33 institutions

13 European coun- tries represented

WP3: Education The WP conducted a survey to discover the needs for education and training of staff at European proton centres. The survey revealed the requirements for training in upcoming as well as in existing centres. To this end the WP is collaborating with the ESTRO school to incorporate particle therapy into the ESTRO core curriculum and the ESTRO School teaching courses through the format of workshops. WP4: Image guidance in particle therapy (IGPT) The aim of this WP is to gain insight into the current practice parameters of IGPT and to drive harmonisation through the establishment of body-site-specific consensus guidelines. All imaging workflow stages are covered by a multidisciplinary team of radiation oncologists, medical physicists and radiation therapists and in one case a radiologist. It is hoped to include vendors in some of the discussions. In 2019, the WP held one workshop to finalise site-specific surveys for launch. WP5: Treatment planning systems in particle therapy The WP has formulated several sub-groups to cover the most important aspects of treatment planning systems (TPS). For the sub-group that considers TPS specification, a collective list of specifications has been published on the ESTRO website to aid and inspire future proton centre managers in their procurement processes.

The TRS398 dosimetry document was approved.

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