SBIR PHASE II, TOPIC 431: AUTOMATIC TREATMENT PLANNING OF CERVICAL CANCER HIGH-DOSE RATE BRACHYTHERPAY FOR LOW-RESOURCE SETTINGS.

Cervical cancer is a major disease globally and 85% of the cancer burden occurs in low- and middle-income countries. Standard of care is external-beam radiotherapy with high dose-rate brachytherapy (HDRBT). Adding brachytherapy to the treatment course improves overall survival by 12% and reduces local recurrence. However, brachytherapy in low-resource settings often do not have adequate human expertise to perform the complicated treatment planning process, limiting its wide-spread use and significantly affecting treatment outcomes. Aiming at solving this problem, VeloxAI will continue the Phase-I project for continued research and development towards commercialization of AutoBrachy, the world first software system to realize fully automatic treatment planning of cervical cancer HDRBT. We will pursue three specific aims: 1) continue to improve the robustness and applicability of the AutoBrachy algorithms for multi-instituion and multi-vendor settings; 2) continue to improve the software usability with a focus on low-resource settings; and 3) perform robust clinical validation study at multiple institutions. The innovation of our project is that it enhances HDRBT of cervical cancer in low-resource settings by utilizing novel computational approaches. Deliverability towards successful commercialization is ensured by extensive research and development in Phase I and continued partnership with complementary expertise and resources.