Flying with the FALCON…from Barcelona 2010 to Barcelona 2012!
In September 2010, during ESTRO29 in Barcelona, ESTRO launched the first edition of FALCON workshops. During this congress, four very well attended sessions were organised and participants had the opportunity to discover this multifunctional platform for contouring and delineation; to work on the proposed clinical cases; to learn the indications and the guidelines proposed by the experts that coordinated the workshops; and, finally, to discuss with other participants, experts and panelists. Four different workshops took place where the participants worked on and discussed contouring in rectal, prostate, head and neck or lung cancer.
FALCON is an important part of the ESTRO strategy to offer its members more live and online educational and professional services. Indeed, this platform offers the opportunity for individual professionals to validate their contouring practice during live workshops and also online by comparing the contours from a participant with those from experts who propose a clinical case. This is also a unique opportunity to communicate and use the ESTRO guidelines in order to further integrate these guidelines into daily practice.
In recent months, this project has been more and more enriched and now it offers different possibilities for the participants to access this educational tool. In fact, FALCON is now easily accessible during many ESTRO Live Courses with hands-on contouring exercises, as well as through an online database of delineation exercises, expert delineations and delineation guidelines.
Looking at Live Courses, in 2011, FALCON has been integrated into the multidisciplinary courses on Head and Neck Cancer, Rectal Cancer, Breast Cancer, 3D Image Based Brachytherapy in Gynaecological Malignancies, PET in Radiation Oncology and Paediatric Radiation Oncology.
FALCON workshops will obviously be an important part of ESTRO31, the next ESTRO annual congress that will take place in Barcelona in May 2012.
Following the feedback from participants on previous courses, we decided to repeat the general organisation of the workshops, but some important optimisations will be applied with the hope of improving the satisfaction and better meeting the needs of those attending.
As is usual, at the beginning of the session, as administrators of the FALCON workshop we will explain to participants how to use the software. After that, the expert will present the clinical case and tell the participants exactly what they need delineate. Then the participants will have at least 30-40 minutes for delineation with the technical support, if needed, from the FALCON team in charge of the workshop (Christine Verfaillie, Miika Palmu, and ourselves). Thereafter, participants will submit their contouring to the database of the system and expert and panelists will have time to comment on the contours from the expert and the audience and to present the recommended guidelines for the delineation and the bibliographic references for the therapeutic strategy chosen. A booklet including the clinical case, guidelines and bibliographic references has been prepared by the expert and it will be given to the participants. Participants will be invited to bring their own laptops but ESTRO foresees the need for some back-up laptops.
As previously mentioned the ESTRO31 workshops will integrate some new input. First of all, most of the topics will have changed from ESTRO29 and the Anniversary Meeting in London.
During ESTRO31, the first workshop will be on breast cancer with Pr. Philip Poortmans as the expert (Thursday, 10 May), the second workshop will be on CNS with Pr. Neil Burnett as the expert (Friday, 11 May), the third workshop will be on prostate cancer with Pr. Vincent Khoo as the expert (Saturday, 13 May 2012) and last, but not least, we will have a workshop on gynecological cancer with Pr. Richard Pötter as the expert (Sunday, 13 May 2012).
The starting time will remain the same (from 8.00 to 10.00 am), but the participants will be asked to arrive in the room 10 minutes before the beginning of the workshop to be ready to start on time.
Participants will be limited to 60 per workshop to keep a strong interactivity in the group. As workshops in the London Anniversary meeting were fully booked in advance, we had to refuse many applications but some registered participants didn’t show up. Therefore we have decided to create a waiting list system to optimise the workshop registration system. At ESTRO31, participants will not only need to register on line for the workshop when registering for the congress but also to confirm their participation by answering a reminder email at the latest by noon the day before. The registration will be cancelled if participation is not confirmed; people from the waiting list will then be offered a place in the workshop.
A large number of technical improvements in our contouring tool is work in progress and is being done by the Educase and FALCON team. This will be presented at the ESTRO31 workshops.
Capturing what has been appreciated during the past workshops and optimising the next ones following the suggestions of the participants, the FALCON team hopes to improve the quality of this educational tool, bringing an important contribution to the programme of ESTRO31.
Sofia Rivera
Service de cancérologie radiothérapie - Hôpital Saint-Louis, Paris (France)
Berardino De Bari
Istituto del Radio - Spedali Civili, Brescia (Italy)