From 1 to 4 September 2026, the TETRIS project took part in the 9th International Conference on the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH 2026), hosted at Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy.
Chairs of VPH 2026 are Francesco Migliavacca, Giulia Luraghi and José F. Rodriguez Matas, all from Politecnico di Milano.
Under the main theme “Towards the Adoption of Digital Twins in Healthcare”, VPH 2026 brought together the international in silico medicine community to discuss the latest developments in Digital Twins, computational modelling, artificial intelligence and their application to personalised healthcare. The scientific programme covered a broad range of topics, including In Silico Oncology, multi-omics data integration, medical imaging, decision-support systems and the verification and validation of Digital Twins.
These themes are closely connected to the multidisciplinary research carried out within TETRIS, where clinical, genetic, imaging and computational approaches are combined to advance personalised risk prediction and support safer and more tailored radiotherapy.
Two TETRIS contributions to In Silico Oncology
The TETRIS consortium contributed to the conference with two scientific presentations, showcasing complementary approaches to understanding and predicting treatment-related side effects in breast cancer radiotherapy.
On 3 September, Francesca Arceci, from Politecnico di Milano, presented “A Causal Computational Framework for Digital Twins in Breast Cancer Radiotherapy”.
The work presented a causal computational framework for Digital Twins in breast cancer radiotherapy, in which expert-informed Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) guide the identification of causally relevant variables for estimating treatment-related toxicity.
The framework moves towards interpretable and computationally tractable tools for future patient-specific and intervention-aware decision support
On 4 September, Benedetta Dionisi Ferrera, from Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori di Milano and CMON Lab, presented “A Genetically Adjusted Radiation Dose for the Prediction of Late Breast Fibrosis after Radiotherapy”.
Her contribution focused on the development of a new causal model integrating patients’ genetic and clinical profiles to simulate the effects of different radiation doses and provide a deeper understanding of the risk of late fibrosis following breast cancer radiotherapy.
Together, the two contributions highlighted different but complementary perspectives within TETRIS research, showing how causal modelling, computational methods and patient-specific information can contribute to improving risk assessment and moving towards more personalised radiotherapy.
Further research from the TETRIS community
Also on 4 September, during the same In Silico Oncology session, Emmy Dalqvist from TETRIS partner Karolinska University Hospital presented “A Protocol for In-Silico Radiotherapy Dose-Escalation of High-Risk Head and Neck Cancer”.
Although this research was not directly carried out within the TETRIS project, the contribution, developed under the supervision of Eva Onjukka, TETRIS WP2 Leader, provided another example of how in silico approaches can be applied to investigate and optimise radiotherapy strategies.
From computational models to personalised healthcare
VPH 2026 offered four days of scientific exchange and interdisciplinary discussion around the growing role of computational modelling and Digital Twins in healthcare. The conference programme explored not only their scientific development, but also their translation into clinical applications, credibility and validation, regulation, and integration into healthcare decision-making.
For TETRIS, participation in VPH 2026 represented an opportunity to share ongoing research with the international in silico medicine community, exchange knowledge across disciplines and contribute to the wider discussion on the future of Digital Twins in healthcare.
The two TETRIS presentations reflected a common goal at the heart of the project: developing computational approaches capable of integrating different sources of patient-specific information to better understand individual risks and ultimately contribute to safer and more personalised radiotherapy.
Congratulations to Francesca Arceci, Benedetta Dionisi Ferrera and all the TETRIS researchers involved for sharing their work with the VPH community.
To discover more about VPH 2026 and its scientific programme, click here.
