Radiation therapy has seen significant advances through the development and clinical deployment of image guidance. This presentation will focus on the research and clinical evidence supporting the use of deformable image registration to perform dose accumulation and adaptive therapy. Examples will focus on improvements in understanding the dose-toxicity relationships in head and neck and lung cancer.

Short bio:
Kristy K. Brock received her PhD in Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences from the University of Michigan. After receiving her PhD, she joined the faculty at the University of Toronto (Radiation Medicine Program, Princess Margaret Hospital) and subsequently the faculty at the University of Michigan (Department of Radiation Oncology). She is currently a Professor with tenure in the Department of Imaging Physics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she is the Director for the Image-Guided Cancer Therapy Research Program. Her research has focused on image guided cancer therapy, where she has developed a biomechanical model-based deformable image registration algorithm to integrate imaging into treatment planning, delivery, and response assessment as well as to understand and validate imaging signals through correlative pathology. Her algorithm was licensed and incorporated into a commercial treatment planning system.

She is board certified by the American Board of Radiology in Therapeutic Medical Physics and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Radiation Physics at MD Anderson. Dr. Brock has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals, is the Editor of the book ‘Image Processing in Radiation Therapy’ and has been the PI/co-PI on 21 peer-reviewed, industry, and institutional grants. She currently serves as the Vice Chair of Science Council for the American Association of Physicists in Medicine as well as Vice Chair of the Big Data Subcommittee. In addition, she is the Chair of the Promoting Science through Research and Training Committee of the American Society of Radiation Oncology.