2017 American Brachytherapy Society’s Annual Meeting Report

Abstract

The Judith Stitt Best Abstract Award recipients are selected through the ABS's meticulous scientific committee review process and the recipients' abstracts are presented in the Annual Meeting's plenary session. The 2017 Annual Meeting saw hundreds of abstract submissions, and four abstracts stood out to receive the award named for and established in the memory of Dr. Judith Stitt, who was very active in the ABS. The first recipient, Nicolae et al. presented the Evaluation of a Machine-Learning Algorithm for Treatment Planning in Prostate Low-Dose-Rate (LDR) Brachytherapywith initial findings suggesting that their prototype algorithm demonstrates the capability to generate LDR prostate brachytherapy pre-operative treatment plans (1). The authors found that their plans are comparable to the quality of plans which were simultaneously created by experts trained in brachytherapy (Figure 1) (1). The authors suggested that in looking to the future, automated planning algorithms for brachytherapy will improve uniformity of plans, reduce planning time, and decrease errors and the number of staff resources needed for brachytherapy (1). Researchers working on NRG/RTOG 0526, a prospective multicenter trial reporting on the outcomes of salvage LDR with initial data on timely and relevant topics such as outcomes following brachytherapy for recurrent prostate cancer following external beam radiotherapy, findings of prototype algorithms capable of rapidly generating prostate brachytherapy pre-operative treatment plans and results on the socioeconomic disparities impacting the utilization of brachytherapy for common malignancies. These novel findings, among many other thoughtful and thought-provoking presentations, gave meeting attendees knowledge of the current state of brachytherapy and future directions of the specialty.