The renaissance of brachytherapy was underway at the time of the first AAPM Brachytherapy Physics Summer School in 1994.  In the intervening eleven years, brachytherapy, both high dose rate and low dose rate, has flourished.  The modality, once offered outside academic institutions infrequently and in limited forms for a few disease sites, is now applied at most radiation oncology centers to a substantial fraction of patients for a multitude of disease sites and using a broad spectrum of approaches.  Major changes since the last summer school on brachytherapy include improved imaging and targeting accuracy and the revision of the dosimetric formalism of AAPM Task Group 43.

This 2005 Brachytherapy Physics Summer School will celebrate what has been accomplished in the past and address the current state of the field is and what the future portends.  The course will begin its coverage, in a pedagogically rational sequence, the fundamentals of sources and delivery systems and the radiobiological rationale for brachytherapy.  This will be followed by presentations detailing source specification parameters, calculation formalisms, target localization techniques, and computer algorithms used in modern brachytherapy treatment planning.  Discussions of classical implant methods, which remain clinically valid and continue to inform radiation oncologists, will form the foundation of talks on implant design, optimization, and quality evaluation and reporting.  With this critical knowledge base in hand, the school will conclude with a series of in-depth clinical application lectures on the planning, delivery, and evaluation of brachytherapy with regard to specific disease sites: gynecologic malignancies, head, neck, and eye irradiation, prostate, breast, and intravascular brachytherapy.  Except for the Wednesday night out, each evening dinner will be accompanied by a formal presentation on topics including our regulatory environment, facility design, and microbrachytherapy.  These evening sessions will also allow attendees to dialog with a panel of that day’s faculty presenters.

The course directors, faculty, and organizers expect that attendees will be able to use the lectures and the accompanying textbook to develop and enhance the scope and understanding of the clinical skills applicable to today’s brachytherapy.

The Summer School program will be submitted for approval for continuing education credit by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Education Programs, Inc. (CAMPEP). We anticipate that for each hour of verified attendance, 1 MPCEC hour of credit will be awarded.

Bruce Thomadsen
University of Wisconsin

Mark Rivard
Tufts-New England Medical Ctr

Wayne Butler
Wheeling Hospital

Wayne Butler, Wheeling Hospital

Sou-Tung Chiu-Tsao, Beth Israel Medical Center

Rupak Das, University of Wisconsin

Larry DeWerd, University of Wisconsin Radiation Calibration

Gary Ezzell, Mayo Clinic Scottsdale

Michael Gillin, MD Anderson Cancer Center

Glenn Glasgow, Loyola University Medical Center

John Horton, MD Anderson Cancer Center

Shirish Jani, Sharp Memorial Hospital

Zuofeng Li, Washington University

Eugene Lief, Maimonides Comprehensive Cancer Center

Paul Laeseke, University of Wisconsin

Ali S. Meigooni, University of Kentucky Medical Center

Ravi Nath, Yale University School of Medicine

Zoubir Ouhib, Lynn Regional Cancer Center

Jean Pouliot, UC, San Francisco

Mark Rivard, Tufts-New England Medical Center

Jason Rownd, Medical College of Wisconsin

Anil Sharma, Long Beach Memorial Medical Center

Bruce Thomadsen, University of Wisconsin

Robert Wallace, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Jeff Williamson, Virginia Commonwealth University

Marco Zaider, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Robert Zwicker, University of Kentucky

Karen MacFarland
AAPM Meetings Manager
One Physics Ellipse
College Park, MD 20740-3846