Dear Friends and Colleagues,
As chairman of the Scientific Committee, I consider it a great privilege to be writing this letter of invitation to the up-coming 11th Biennial ESTRO Conference on Physics and Radiation Technology to be held in London between the 8th and 12th of May, 2011.
This scientific programme will provide an opportunity to present and discuss new achievements in radiotherapy physics and technology whilst also offering a package of high level educational lectures. We aim to capture the interest of clinicians by offering presentations with physics and technology which may have an immediate impact on clinical radiotherapy and should therefore be appealing for the clinicians who will be present for the GEC ESTRO conference and the International Oncology Forum
This opportunity, with many clinicians present and interested in both external beam and brachytherapy, should be of benefit to our conference and we believe our programme offers a great deal which may be of interest to professionals other than physicists and RTTs. This approach fosters the ESTRO aim of bringing together specialists from different disciplines in order to create a successful chain for patient treatment, so important in the overall process of healing. We are pleased that this will take place during the time of 11th Biennial Physics and Technology Meeting.
In constructing the programme we have tried to involve people from different countries in order to broaden the traditionally active group, thus bringing radiotherapy physics and technology closer to all ESTRO members.
The programme is focused on emerging topics and constitutes a very interesting track of: advanced imaging for radiotherapy, dose painting based on functional imaging, QA of imaging, adaptive strategies for intra-fraction and adaptive strategies for inter-fraction including non-rigid dose summation. We remembered that medical physics and radiation technology need some degree of unification and accreditation and that these should be equally recognised world-wide. Therefore, in order to promote our professions, a special session has been planned presenting European and American points of view on full mobility of medical physicists throughout the world, as well as the role of different societies and federations. As usual, proton therapy is of high interest and we all await the moment when this technology will be sufficiently developed to offer cost-effective tools, allowing for the spread of this promising modality. Risk management and practical technologies affecting the daily practice of patient irradiation will also be extensively discussed.
Special attention has been paid to the young scientists programme and a special track has been prepared to be of interest to our younger colleagues.
Looking back, we remembered that the first Biennial Conference in Budapest, 1991, attracted a few hundred participants, whilst the 2009 conference in Maastricht drew over 1200, along with 900 company delegates. Whether or not this last success will be surpassed in 2011 depends on both the programme and the participants. This exciting conference is to be held in London, a truly vibrant city, which gives us a particularly good opportunity to meet on both formal and informal platforms.
Thinking of what has been prepared, on behalf of the Scientific Committee, I take great pleasure in inviting you to London in May 2011, to contribute to the challenging 11th Physics and Technology Conference and to benefit from the interdisciplinary exchange arising from the GEC-ESTRO and International Oncology Forum to be held nearby.
Julian Malicki
Chairperson of the Scientific Committee