Mission

The Division is responsible for the clinical development, selection and quality assurance of radiation treatment planning and equipment. Patient treatment delivery is critically dependent upon clinical and academic research expertise of these members. Highly accurate Dosimetry and automatic computerized treatment delivery is the hallmark of the Physics Division members. The group has introduced and maintained unique and innovative technology in the past decade. Dr. Yu developed the PIPER (Prostate Implant Planning Engine for Radiotherapy) for the optimization of radioactive seed implant of the prostate while minimizing the dose to the bladder, urethra and rectum. The entire treatment delivery and treatment planning system has been replaced within the last 5 years. The latest department armormentarium is the Novalis Stereotactic Treatment System. The Novalis System has been implanted to deliver highly localized dose distribution to small primary and metastatic lesions throughout the patient's body with minimal damage to the normal critical structures. As an example, five lesions were treated in the lungs of a young 24 year old male with minimal impact on the normal lung capacity and obliteration of the five metastatic lesions.

Radiation Physics develops innovative treatment techniques, plans conventional dose delivery, and is responsible for the accuracy of dose delivery in all radiation treatments and the calibration of radiation sources. The quality assurance of all instrumentation producing radiation is performed by this division's faculty. All patients undergoing radiation therapy receive computerized treatment planning before and during their course of treatment. This division shares in the responsibility for introducing the new technologies which are major innovations in radiation treatment. These consist of the items identified above including, total body irradiation, high dose rate brachytherapy, stereotactic radiosurgery, and the soon to be implemented three dimensional treatment planning and 3D conformal treatment with multileaf collimation. A team of physicists is necessary for the complexities of 3D treatment planning, in particular, the area of image analysis as applied to designs of treatment plans. This division is also responsible for its own research activities as well as supporting the research activities of others in the JWCC.

Radiation Physics has played an integral role in major renovations in the department such as replacement of our original linear accelerators with a Varian 2300, and the installation of the Varian Clinac 2100EX and the computer-controlled Ximatron simulator.

Faculty

Michael C. Schell, PhD; Professor, Director of Medical Physics

Dr. Schell has been responsible for introducing stereotactic radiosurgery, CT/MRI image correlation and 3D treatment planning.

Clinical Faculty

• Douglass Rosenweig, Ph.D.Assistant Professor
  
• Sergio Ballister, M.S.
  

  Sergio's expertise is in 3D treatment planning and brachytherapy.

• Mojtaba Dahbashi, M.S.

  Mr. Dahbashi is a trained physicist who assists in therapeutic planning, and is responsible for quality assurance at the satellite treatment sites.

• Haisong Liu, PhD; Assistant Professor

  Dr. Liu research work is on image segmentation and registration, brachytherapy, as well as the PIPER project.

• Doug Clark, M.S.
  

Research

• Walter O'Dell, PhD; Assistant Professor

  Dr. O'Dell contributes expertise in image processing and modeling of organ deformation

Dosimetry

• Ken Bingerman, RT, CMD
• Rosemary Donatello, RT, CMD
• Abraham Philip, RT, CMD
• Teresa Stupski, RT, CMD

Computer Systems and Network Admin.

• Larry Brightenfield;

Administrative Secretary

• Kathy Clay

Engineering

• Rick Blad
• Alex Perec

Goals

• Clinical physics support of the radiation oncology of cancer patients
• Education of radiation oncology residents
• Academic research, which supports the long-term goals of the field of radiation oncology.

The first goal consists of computerized treatment planning and the quality assurance of treatment delivery. The second goal is realized by the radiation therapy physics and dosimetry courses, which are administered throughout the academic year. The third goal is accomplished by research programs in a number of areas. Research currently is focused on the development of a conformal collimator system for stereotactic radiosurgery, plastic simulator-based radiation dosimetry, and the development of new treatment techniques in three dimensional treatment planning, total body irradiation and high dose rate remote afterloading. To support these efforts, the physics section is composed of four Ph.D. physicists, one masters level physicist, four dosimetrists, an engineer, a computer systems manager, and a block cutter.

Space and Major Equipment

The Medical Physics Division occupies approximately 2000 square feet of treatment planning space, 40 square feet of radioactive source storage. Major equipment includes a computer network for treatment p lanning and administrative capabilities. The treatment planning system is comprised of a BrainLAB Brainscan 5.1 treatment planning system, an SGI O2 workstation, and 6 treatment planning stations. The software packages accommodated by these systems include: 3D treatment planning systems, 2D treatment planning systems, as well as the NIH 3D treatment planning code. The computer networks will be gated together to facilitate the flow of clinical information from the basement to the ground floor of radiation oncology.

Research

• Gated External-Beam Radiotherapy

  A multidisciplinary team of researchers, led by Dr. Walter O’Dell, are working to develop a technology to predict the motion of internal targets, such as tumors in the lung and liver during breathing, in order to treat them more accurately with highly-focused radiation therapy that would effectively improve local control and limit normal cell damage. In the heart, this technology will track cardiac motion and breathing, and more precisely “gate” the radiation delivered, that is, control the dose and target beam to treat only target cells.

Education

Ongoing Procedures

• Multileaf Collimation for 3D Conformal Treatment
  The Multileaf Collimator enables a 3D treatment plan to be carried out efficiently: multiple fields (as many as 10) can be treated in short periods of time (15 minutes) while patients are in an immobilization device.
• 3D Treatment Planning System.
  This sophisticated computerized approach to treatment planning is under development. It will allow for great precision in the delivery of doses to tumors while protecting critical normal tissues. As such, dose escalation to tumors in the form of conformal radiation therapy is a goal for all anatomical sites.

Abraham Philip and Dr. Michael Schell consider a radiosurgery treatment plan.

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This page was last updated Sept 25, 2005.
URL: http://radonc.urmc.rochester.edu/department_info/medical_physics.html