Background and Motivation:
Not all treatment centres will have access to upright imaging modalities, so there is a critical need for alternative approaches. Developing a versatile image guidance workflow, empowered by robust deformable image registration and associated algorithms for generating supine-to-upright image transformations, will be vital to ensure accurate treatment planning in centres with limited resources.
Goal:
A comprehensive multi-modality image-guided workflow, establishing treatment planning, robustness, and margin guidelines based on the gathered upright imaging data and numerical phantom
Tasks:
My name is Ronja Stern, I am from Switzerland, where I am currently working on Project 16 ‘Multimodal Imaging for Upright Posture’. I have started my PhD in September 2025 under the supervision of Dr Ye Zhang, a tenured scientist at the Centre for Proton Therapy at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). I obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer science at the University of Bern and a master’s degree in IT & Cognition at the University of Copenhagen.
The reason why I joined this project is my fascinated with bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world clinical applications. Drawing on my background in computer science, my goal is to develop AI-driven methods that enable more accurate, efficient and patient-specific workflows in radiation therapy. To achieve this, I am particularly interested in physics-informed models, motion modelling and multimodal learning approaches. As part of my project, I plan to work on the generation of synthetic medical images, image registration and dose prediction, with the long-term aim of improving treatment quality and clinical decision-making. With my work I aim to contribute to the foundations of upright radiotherapy workflows. I am eager to deepen my understanding of medical physics, to establish a professional network across Europe, and collaborate with and learn from experts at different institutions.
I consider myself a dedicated, curious person, who enjoys understanding how things work, from the highest conceptual level to technical implementation. Before joining academia, I was a professional badminton player representing Switzerland at multiple international competitions. In my free time, I continue to enjoy doing sports such as badminton, skiing, cycling or disc golf, which I see as the perfect complement to research and academic work.
