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Radiation Oncology
Medical Physics Group
Mission, Faculty, Goals, Research, Education,

Mission


Radiation Physics 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.

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 that are major innovations in radiation treatment. These include the Novalis Stereotactic Treatment System 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; total body irradiation; high dose rate brachytherapy; stereotactic radiosurgery; and three dimensional treatment planning and conformal treatment with multileaf collimation.


Faculty


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

Dr. Schell is responsible for overseeing and performing stereotactic radiosurgery, CT/MRI image correlation and 3D treatment planning. He has also served as a mentor to undergraduates, graduates, and post-doctoral fellows.

Doug Clark, M.S., Associate Physicist

Mr. Clark is responsible for quality assurance of linear accelerators, treatment planning systems, and brachytherapy seed assays.

Robert Meiler, PhD, Assistant Professor
Douglas Rosenzweig, PhD, Associate Professor, Director of Clinical Medical Physics

Dr. Rosenzweig supervises physicist and dosimetrist clinical activities at the University and its satellites. He also oversees quality assurance of linear accelerators, CTs, treatment planning equipment, and all aspects of brachytherapy.

Rami Abu-Aita, MS, Associate Medical Physicist
Alex Gray, MS, Associate Medical Physicist

Research

Walter O'Dell, PhD, Assistant Professor

Dr. O'Dell contributes expertise in image processing for tumor detection, monitoring tumor growth, normal tissue reactions to radiation, modeling of organ deformation and modeling of cancer spread.

Dosimetry

• Ken Bingerman, RT, CMD
• Rosemary Donatello, RT, CMD
• Mary Hare, MSEd, CMD, RTT
• Fazal Khan, B.S.
• Thomas Lundquist, RTT, CMD
• Celeste Rothfuss, RT
• Abraham Philip, RT, CMD
• Teresa Stupski, RT, CMD

Computer Systems and Network Admin.

• Larry Brightenfield;

Administrative Secretary

• Joyce Ostberg

Engineering

• Rick Blad

Goals

The medical physics section of Radiation Oncology has three primary 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.


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


Research
The importance of physics participation in clinical trials for stereotactic radiosurgery, 3D treatment planning, and total body irradiation is strongly emphasized.

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
Radiation oncology physics participates in the education of the radiation oncology residents. A physics course is provided for the residents each year during their training. In addition there is a physics rotation built into the program and physics labs are interspersed throughout the academic year.