NSS 2025.02.21 - Alexander Grimwood "Current and Future Applications of AI in Radiotherapy"

MPU Noon Seminar Series Speaker: Alexander Grimwood, PhD HCA London Radiotherapy Centre, London, United Kingdom Title: "Current and Future Applications of AI in Radiotherapy" Abstract: Artificial Intelligence has become a symbol of progress. Touted as a driver of speed, efficiency and innovation "AI" is now often used as a self-referential term without defining underlying methodologies. In this presentation, I will give an overview of the current state of AI within radiotherapy and discuss the practical considerations that arise during clinical implementation and development. I will highlight specific machine learning techniques relevant to radiotherapy, explain their respective strengths and weaknesses, and describe how the field has developed. By discussing these techniques, I will establish some of the key concepts underpinning methodologies used in applications such as image segmentation, synthesis, task optimisation, and predictive analytics. In doing so, I will contextualise the field’s transition from Deep Learning to Generative AI and on towards a proposed General Intelligence (GI). Finally, I will speculate on the future use of AI in radiotherapy, whether its reliance on “Big Data” will inhibit its adoption and how the technology could shape the role of medical physicists in the clinic. Biographical Summary: Alex Grimwood is a Medical Physicist at the HCA London Radiotherapy Centre, UK. Having gained a PhD in optical and ultrasound imaging, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher investigating ultrasound guidance and developing deep learning tools to automate image guidance in interventions including radiotherapy. After five years in research, he moved into the clinic – working in the team that established London’s only Proton Therapy clinic before joining HCA two years later.