Editorial
Letter from Dimos Baltas and Christian Kirisits, MSc, PhD, Prof.

5th February 2009

Professor Janusz Skowronek
Editor-in-Chief
Journal of Contemporary Brachytherapy

Dear Professor Skowronek

During the last 10 years there was a substantial increase in development for brachytherapy technology including new types of radiation sources, treatment planning, imaging technology and 3D dose calculation. Image guidance and navigation technologies started to play an important role in the clinical implementation of Brachytherapy. Real time intraoperative planning for prostate cancer utilizing LDR or HDR techniques, dynamically adaptive planning for gynaecological malignancies, new concepts for pre-planning techniques are some of the major achievements over that period. Advanced inverse planning and optimization tools, new 3D dose calculation algorithms taking into account the influence of tissue inhomogeneities and applicator materials open new horizons in the treatment planning of Brachytherapy procedures. Advanced imaging systems such as state of the art CT, MR, PET-CT and new developments in ultrasound technology are becoming available to an increasing amount of members within the brachytherapy community enabling a more accurate and effective image guidance for achieving real conformal dose delivery. Dose and volume constraints based planning with on-line DVH calculation is a good basis to create treatment plans with increased target dose and sparing of organs at risk.
All these new developments are well documented in a large amount of publications in the peer reviewed literature. Medical Physicists and Biomedical Engineers from Europe played a major role in those evolutions. However, until now there was no dedicated European Brachytherapy journal available.
This vacuum is now filled by the new Journal. We would like to congratulate the Editor for his efforts and we are promising him to our best as members of the editorial board to stimulate publications from the medical physics and biomedical engineering community focusing on Brachytherapy from Europe and all around the world.


Yours sincerely


Dimos Baltas, Ph.D.,
Adj. Research Assoc. Prof.
Director Dept. Medical Physics & Engineering
Strahlenklinik
Klinikum Offenbach GmbH
Germany


Dr. Christian Kirisits
Assoc. Professor
Director of Brachytherapy Physics
Dept. of Radiotherapy
Medical University of Vienna/AKH
Austria