Do you use a physicist to do your mapping for IMRT?
Academic Title: Assistant Professor
Board Certifications:
Radiation Oncology
Medical physicists are integrally involved throughout all aspects of treatment planning and delivery.
Radiation planning occurs with the participation of physicians, medical physicists, and dosimetrists. Once an IMRT plan has been approved by the treating physician, medical physicists lead quality assurance procedures designed to test the IMRT plan, as delivered on the machine, prior to the patient's treatment.
Only after the IMRT plan has passed the quality assurance checks will it be used to treat patients. Even after the IMRT planning has been completed, medical physicists continue to play an active role in quality assurance procedures designed to confirm the accuracy of patient positioning and daily image-guidance strategies, to verify beam output parameters, and to perform daily, weekly, monthly, and annual testing of the linear accelerators.
Jefferson's medical physicists help write national standards for quality assurance procedures and play a major part of the culture of safety and quality in radiation oncology at the Kimmel Cancer Center.