Prof. Jong-Seo Chai’s Research Team, Selected for Korea Medical Device Development Fund Project

A research team led by Jong-Seo Chai, a professor of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, was selected for Korea Medical Device Development Fund Project in September 2020. The title of the project is “Development of an Integrated Solution for the Treatment of Dual Beam Radiation Cancer Based on Automatic Lesion Detection.”

The research team is composed of Prof. Mitra Geergherehchi, Prof. Ho-Seung Song, Prof. Young-Yi Han, and Prof. Tae-Gyu Kim. Also, the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Korea Institute of Radiological & Medical Sciences, and the research team of Chungbuk National University Hospital participated in the project. This project will be provided about 11 billion won of research fund over 6 years.

[Image 1] KICK OFF meeting for Development of an Integrated Solution for the Treatment of Dual Beam Radiation Cancer Based on Automatic Lesion Detection project

This research project is based on the results of the project “Development of 500cGy level dual-head gantry radiation treatment system for malignant tumor treatment based on automatic lesion tracking technology to reduce treatment time by 30%” which was successfully developed through the development of convergence industry original technology project organized by the Ministry of Science and ICT from 2012 to 2018.

The goal is to improve the completeness of radiation cancer treatment technology and improve performance under the GLP, GMP environment, obtain clinical permits from the Food and Drug administration and then commercialize them to cure cancer patients.

The radiation treatment devices proposed in this task have recently been identified as the optimal medical device for SBRT treatment, which has been in the spotlight as a cancer treatment method. Also, many hospitals are interested in this treatment because it can increase hospital revenues as the number of patients per single treatment device more than doubles compared to other radiation therapy devices.

[Image 2] X-band Beam Radiation Cancer Treatment that Prof. Chai’s team developed

The estimated price of a dual beam radiation treatment device on the market is about 8 billion won, and the current price of a similar radiation treatment device with a single beam is around 6 billion won. The dual beam radiation treatment device developed by this research team likely has a technological edge in the global radiation medical device market, which is expected to be competitive enough in the international market in the future.