June 29-July 1, 2018, The 9th Chinese National Conference of Nasopharyngeal Cancer was held in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. This conference is hosted by the China Anti-Cancer Association Nasopharyngeal Professional Committee and Sichuan Anti-Cancer Association, and organized by the Cancer Hospital Affiliate to School of Medicine, UESTC·Sichuan Cancer Hospital and the Nasopharyngeal Committee of the Sichuan Anti-Cancer Association. More than 600 experts and scholars from various provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Europe participated in this academic conference to discuss the hot issues in the diagnosis and treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma such as clinical staging, standardized treatment, radio physics and so on. PVmed demonstrated the automatic delineation system for nasopharyngeal carcinoma radiotherapy and other AI technologies and products.

During the conference, PVmed held the seminar on “the frontier issues of intelligent optimization of radiotherapy processes”. The seminar invited more than 40 top experts of radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal cancer from major cancer hospitals, including chair of the China Anti-Cancer Association Nasopharyngeal Cancer Committee Prof. Chaosu Hu, next chair from Cancer Hospital Affiliate to School of Medicine, UESTC·Sichuan Cancer Hospital Prof. Jinyi Lang and most of the standing committee members and committee members. President of PVmed Dr. Yao Lu, chief scientific adviser Dr. Chenyang Xu and vice president Dr. Haibin Huang attend the seminar. The frontier issues such as nasopharyngeal cancer radiotherapy process and AI optimization are discussed.

President of PVmed Dr. Yao Lu made a brief introduction of the company at the seminar. PVmed has the world’s first automatic delineation system for the clinical radiotherapy target of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, which has been embedded in the Philips artificial intelligence platform. PVmed has breast cancer aided diagnostic products based on molybdenum target and ultrasound, which can assist doctors in rapid diagnosis. PVmed also has a diagnostic product for common diseases of the lungs, which can assist doctors in diagnosis of more than 90% of common diseases of the lungs such as lung nodules, lung tumors, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and lung infections. Dr. Yao Lu said that PVmed hoped to gain more valuable experience for better AI product optimization through the academic discussions with clinicians and experts.

At the seminar, experts from major cancer hospitals put forward opinions and suggestions based on clinical practice. They are optimistic about the application prospects of AI in clinical practice. Especially in the field of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, radiotherapy doctors have done high-intensity work, and AI will provide greatly help for nasopharyngeal carcinoma radiotherapy by reducing the work intensity of radiotherapy doctors. AI will have better development in clinical applications based on continuous data accumulation and model optimization in the future. However, they also pointed out that it is still difficult to achieve intelligent radiotherapy, especially for lung cancer, liver cancer, breast cancer, etc. There is still a long way to go before the radiotherapy process for nasopharyngeal cancer is best integrated with AI. They suggested clinicians should work closely with AI experts to further promote the application of AI for nasopharyngeal carcinoma radiotherapy based on joint database, big data analysis, etc.

At the end of the seminar, Dr. Chenyang Xu and Dr. Yao Lu made summary respectively. They suggested that the AI optimization of nasopharyngeal carcinoma needs to be agreed by the industry in terms of data, parameters, and processes. It also needs to be discussed widely for more advices and suggestions. Although the application of AI in the field of nasopharyngeal carcinoma radiotherapy is difficult by now, it will be used for clinical application better only by continuous refinement and optimization.