Congratulations to our graduate student Ethan Stolen (Giger lab), who just published a new paper in Biomedical Physics and Engineering Express (BPEX).
Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology James Sohn led the multi-institutional effort. Their paper introduces an innovative new workflow for fabricating custom boluses, which are essential for delivering accurate radiation doses to superficial tumors. Their work details a novel software tool, ONCOFLAT , that uses a spectral mesh flattening algorithm to unfold a complex 3D virtual bolus design from a treatment plan into a precise 2D cutting guide for radiation therapists.
This new method streamlines the entire process, reducing the total design-to-fabrication time to under five minutes. It solves a major clinical challenge by replacing time-consuming manual "trial-and-error" methods with a fast, low-cost, and highly reproducible approach for creating patient-specific boluses.
Their new clinical workflow, described in this paper, is a valuable step toward standardizing custom bolus production and enhancing treatment consistency in our radiation therapy clinic here at UChicago Medicine. Their innovative process highlights UChicago’s commitment to being at the forefront of personalized radiation therapy.
Read the paper here:
Sohn, J J, Stolen, E, Sen, S, Praveen, A, & Park, J (2025). Streamlining custom bolus fabrication via 3D-to-2D unfolding using spectral mesh flattening. Biomedical Physics & Engineering Express, 11 065001 . https://doi.org/10.1088/2057-1976/ae09b1