Martin Grossmann
Martin Grossmann PhD, Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland.
Dr. Grossmann has worked in High Energy Physics at CERN and in Muon Physics at PSI before joining the Center for Protontherapy CPT there in 1995.
He programmed the therapy control system for the world’s first pencil beam scanning gantry which started clinical operations in 1996. For many years he lead the IT & Electronics group at CPT and was in charge of control and safety systems for several PSI built treatment rooms. He is now Senior Technical Advisor at CPT.
Abstract Dr. Grossmann Lectures:
Lecture 1: Recent Developments in Protontherapy – Technology for the Benefit of Patients
The use of proton beams for radiotherapy has been proposed in the 1940s and patients have been treated with this modality since the 1960s. With the advent of more powerful computers for therapy planning and fast electronics for sophisticated controls in the 1990s it became possible to even better exploit the therapeutic advantage of protons by employing magnetic pencil beam scanning. While pioneering work was carried out in physics research laboratories therapy facilities have now become commercially available by a number of vendors. Technology-driven research is ongoing to further improve the quality of protontherapy and make it available to a larger number of patients.
The talk will give an overview of the development of protontherapy and illustrate how therapeutic innovations have been driven by technological progress. Current research topics like ultra-high dose rate beam delivery (“FLASH”) and approaches to compensate the effect of organ motion will be presented.
Lecture 2: Smart Ideas are not enough - the Role of Technological Innovations in Physics Applications for Medicine
Sometimes it takes time to put a good idea into practice: magnets are not strong enough, electronics are not fast enough, computers are not powerful enough. The idea’s realization needs the proper technology.
This presentation will highlight some examples how technological innovations, in particular in nuclear instrumentation, played a crucial role for advances in physics applications in medicine, in particular for medical imaging and radiation therapy.
