Main Objective
The main objective of CHILDose is to optimize dosimetry in pediatric radiation procedures in diagnosis and therapy, considering personalized characteristics of each patient at the multiscale level. Novel and advanced tools will be used to offer the clinician the possibility to assess alternative imaging and therapeutic protocols and evaluate the radiobiology effect, in real time, in silico, to minimize patient dose, while maintaining diagnostic image quality and the therapeutic effect.
Key Features
Complementary expertise of the partners will permit:
- The development of an open access dataset for calculating dosimetry factors in most common nuclear medicine and radiology exams. This dataset will be freely available, under the FAIR principles, to the scientific community.
- The development of a pediatric computational phantom population representing patients between 3-15 years old, including both genders and different body types. This database will be freely provided to the scientific community for research purposes through the cloud, again using FAIR principles, giving to clinicians the opportunity to match (with automated tools) any new patient with a specific one from the population's 3D models.
- Novel research on radio-biological effects from ionizing irradiation, with a multiscale dosimetry approach. In-silico study of the DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) after an irradiation procedure using experimental data and translating DSBs to cellular and organ effectiveness will be performed, for application in pediatric cases with ionizing radiation.
- The investigation of the therapeutic effect of radioimmunotherapy (RIT) in specific pediatric applications, calculating the impact of the therapeutic effectiveness on different pediatric patients, in silico, considering individual anatomical characteristics.
- The development of a software tool for optimizing imaging and therapeutic protocols. The tool will use database elements and machine learning techniques to optimize the absorbed dose that a patient will receive, considering his/her personal characteristics, while maintaining image quality or maximum dose in target tissue, i.e. the tumor.
- The clinical validation of the developed software. We will collect user feedback, assess its accuracy, and investigate its exploitation in the clinical environment.
Methodology
The methodology steps followed in CHILDose project
The objectives of CHILDose address major challenges in the prospect of personalized pediatric dosimetry and the correlation of dose and radiobiological effect in clinical applications. The synergy of all research team members is needed as they provide intersectoral and interdisciplinary expertise, which will allow:
- The development and assessment of novel technologies for dose optimization in pediatric exams
- The evaluation of the new software tool
- The possible delivery of a new product
The project will involve the combined use of advanced computational tools and clinical expertise, namely, Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, Monte Carlo techniques (MC) as a dosimetry gold standard, advanced pediatric computational models, radiobiological and radiochemical simulations (Geant4-DNA), GUI implementation, speed-up computational techniques (graphics processing unit (GPU) and high-performance computing (HPC), automated image processing algorithms, clinical data and clinical evaluation.
Project Impact
The workflow of CHILDose project
The successful implementation of CHILDose will have a large and prolonged impact in the medical field for children patient dosimetry, which can be extended to adult patient dosimetry. These scientific activities are accompanied by a well-planned dissemination and training plan, which is described in detail in the following sections.