On April 8th, Sanne van Velzen was awarded the title of Doctor by the University of Utrecht after successfully defending her thesis titled ‘AI-based Analysis of Cardiovascular Disease Risk in CT of Breast Cancer Patients’. Due to the COVID-19 restrictions the defense took place online.

Due to advances in screening and treatment the number of breast cancer survivors is increasing. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a common problem in this population and the risk of CVD is increased by certain breast cancer treatments. The majority of breast cancer patients is treated with radiotherapy and receives a CT scan for radiotherapy treatment planning. These CT scans provide an opportunity for application of image analysis methods. This thesis describes a number of automatic methods for accurate and reliable detection and quantification of CVD risk and for estimation of radiotherapy treatment consequences. To bring the methods closer to clinical use, extensive evaluations of the methods are described.

Sanne was supervised by promotors Prof. dr. Ivana Išgum, Prof. dr. Helena M. Verkooijen and Prof. dr. Max A. Viergever.