Michael Mills

• University of Louisville

Withdrawal: Erli Chen, Michael D. Mills, John A. Antolak, Ivan M. Buzurovic, William Dezarn, Farhana R. Khan, Charles Kirby, Brent Parker, Todd Pawlicki, Zhong Su, Chrisine M. Swanson, Russell B. Tarver, Bruce Tomadsen, Nicholai E. Wingreen, Susan White, Ming Yang, Sumin Zhou, "The current state, future supply and demand of therapy physicists - A s...

The medical physics profession is undergoing significant changes. Starting in 2014, candidates registering for certification exams by the American Board of Radiology must have completed a CAMPEP‐accredited residency. This requirement, along with tightened state regulations, uncertainty in future reimbursement, and a stronger emphasis on board certi...

The Abt study of medical physicist work values for radiation oncology physics services, Round IV is completed. It supersedes the Abt III study of 2008. The 2015 Abt study measured qualified medical physicist (QMP) work associated with routine radiation oncology procedures as well as some special procedures. As before, a work model was created to al...

The American Association of Medical Dosimetrists (AAMD) designed and directed 2 surveys of the AAMD membership. The first was in 2011 and the second in 2014. There were a number of questions common to both surveys, and this article seeks to evaluate these common questions to determine trends among the professional membership of the AAMD. It is demo...

The goal of the intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) process is to deposit a custom three-dimensional dose distribution into the target volume of a patient with extreme accuracy and precision. Computer optimization can generate treatment plans consisting of spatially nonuniform radiation beams that produce a relatively uniform dose distribu...

The American Board of Radiology (ABR) is one of 24 independent national boards that are members of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS). It was founded in 1934 to certify physicians in Radiology, and later in other various specialties and sub-specialties related to radiology. It is a not-for-profit organization, and its only purpose is...

-

-

In the arena of radiation oncology special procedures, medical physicists are often the focus professionals for implementation and administration of advanced and complex technologies. One of the most vexing and challenging aspects of managing complexity concerns the ongoing internal qualification and credentialing of radiation oncology physicists t...

This issue's editorial is an invited commentary authored by Maria F. Chan, Joann I. Prisciandaro, S. Jeff Shepard, and Per H. Halvorsen. It discusses an essential question for practicing medical physicists: What are minimum practice standards and recommendations for clinically active medical physicists? The topic is both timely and essential, as th...

-

-

For proton beam therapy, CT imaging is required to calculate dose based on CT pixel values of relative stopping power (RSP). The variation among CT-scanners and the phantom used to derive the relationship CT number-electron density-RSP has not been investigated. Using RMI CT phantoms, 18 CT scanners and a Tomotherapy unit, the Hounsfield unit (HU)...

-

The purpose of this investigation is to measure, characterize and report stray photon leakage and scatter radiation measurements from the Mobetron, an intra‐operative electron linear accelerator designed for use in an operating room environment. The study is needed due to recent changes to the shielding design of the Mobetron, and also to provide s...

Purpose: Extending MVCT's potential for daily patient position and anatomy verification, we investigated the feasibility of using MVCT to assess the daily delivered dose for head and neck patients treated with proton beams. Method and Materials: A Rando head phantom was scanned on a Philips Brilliance Big Bore CTscanner to obtain the planning kVCT...

Purpose: This study was designed to develop a new technique to better treat conjunctival lymphoma while limiting dose to the lens. Previous texts have suggested using a “hanging block” approach, for example a lead filled straw suspended in the center of the treatment field. The possibility of using a baby nipple has several advantages, including ea...

Purpose: Accuracy in proton beam treatment planning is intimately related to the quality of the treatment planningCTimage set characterized by Hounsfield unit (HU). Relative electron density (ED) or relative stopping power (RSP) is associated with HU for inhomogeneity corrections. Variability of these parameters from several scanners is evaluated....

A review of commercially available allied health educational management software tools was performed to evaluate their capacity to manage program data associated with a CAMPEP‐accredited Therapy Physics Residency Program. Features of these software tools include: a) didactic course reporting and organization, b) competency reporting by topic, categ...

Significant controversy surrounds the 2012 / 2014 decision announced by the Trustees of the American Board of Radiology (ABR) in October of 2007. According to the ABR, only medical physicists who are graduates of a Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Education Programs, Inc. (CAMPEP) accredited academic or residency program will be admit...

IMRT plans generated in Eclipse use a fast algorithm to evaluate dose for optimization and a more accurate algorithm for a final dose calculation, the Analytical Anisotropic Algorithm. The use of a fast optimization algorithm introduces optimization convergence errors into an IMRT plan. Eclipse has a feature where optimization may be performed on t...

The physician's planning objective is often a uniform dose distribution throughout the planning target volume (PTV), including superficial PTVs on or near the surface of a patient's body. Varian's Eclipse treatment planning system uses a progressive resolution optimizer (PRO), version 8.2.23, for RapidArc dynamic multileaf collimator volumetric mod...

Purpose: A review of commercially available allied health educational management software tools led to a decision to purchase the Typhon Group Allied Health Student Tracking Module for the CAMPEP‐accredited Therapy Program at the University of Louisville. Advantages of the Typhon Group software include a) didactic course reporting and organization,...

Purpose: Significant controversy surrounds the 2012 / 2014 decision announced by the Trustees of the American Board of Radiology in October of 2007. According to the ABR, only medical physicists that are graduates of a CAMPEP‐accredited academic or residency program will be admitted for examination in the years 2012 and 2013. Only graduates of a CA...

Radiation therapy treatment planning for volumes close to the patient's surface, in lung tissue and in the head and neck region, can be challenging for the planning system optimizer because of the complexity of the treatment and protected volumes, as well as striking heterogeneity corrections. Because it is often the goal of the planner to produce...

There is a crisis in scholarly publishing. The value of the scholarly information is frequently much less than the cost of providing that information. Consequently, libraries are suffering and scholars do not have access to information that they need. However, certain for-profit publishers and scientific societies are benefiting substantially from...

Standards for commissioning and quality control of radiation therapy equipment have traditionally been established through the consensus of “experts”. The recently implemented Canadian approach to standards (medphys.ca) has broadened the expert panel to include the entire Canadian medical physics community through web‐based consultation. This proce...

It is expected that intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and image guided radiation therapy (IGRT) will replace a large portion of radiation therapy treatments currently performed with conventional MLC-based 3D conformal techniques. IGRT may become the standard of treatment in the future for prostate and head and neck cancer. Many establish...

The development of remyelinating strategies designed to enhance recruitment and differentiation of endogenous precursor cells available to a site of demyelination in the adult spinal cord will require a fundamental understanding of the potential for adult spinal cord precursor cells to remyelinate as well as an insight into epigenetic cues that reg...

Intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT) has been customarily performed either in a shielded operating suite located in the operating room (OR) or in a shielded treatment room located within the Department of Radiation Oncology. In both cases, this cancer treatment modality uses stationary linear accelerators. With the development of new technology,...

The additional equipment and personnel costs of supplying image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) technology have caused many to question if the marginal gains in patients' health-related quality of life are worth the additional cost. Novel IGRT technologies, including cone-beam computed tomography and helical tomotherapy, provide the opportunity to...

The initial Abt Study of Medical Physicist Work Values for Radiation Oncology Physics Services was published in October 1995. That study measured qualified medical physicist (QMP) work associated only with routine radiation oncology procedures. In the intervening years, medical physics practice has changed dramatically. Three-dimensional treatment...

To systematically review the evidence for the use of stereotactic radiosurgery or stereotactic fractionated radiation therapy in adult patients with malignant glioma. Key clinical questions to be addressed in this evidence-based review were identified. Outcomes considered were overall survival, quality of life or symptom control, brain tumor contro...

To systematically review the evidence for the use of stereotactic radiosurgery in adult patients with brain metastases. Key clinical questions to be addressed in this evidence-based review were identified. Outcomes considered were overall survival, quality of life or symptom control, brain tumor control or response and toxicity. MEDLINE (1990-2004...

Purpose: The treatment of tumors on convex surfaces with a uniform dose is a challenging problem in radiotherapy. Traditionally, surface tumors have been treated with electron beams or a combination of electron and photon beams with consequent problems of uniformity at regions of abutment. Grazing Incidence Photon Therapy (GIPT) can potentially pro...

Purpose: Helical Tomotherapy is an emerging form of radiation therapy treatment which is finding its way into existing and new facilities. The predominant source of radiation to consider for shielding design is from head leakage because of the presence of a beam block. The definition of the head leakage factor in NCRP reports is irrelevant for this...

The official beginning of the ABR Maintenance of Certification program for medical physicists began this year. Many have registered and many more have questions. The purpose of this session is to present a brief review of the ABR MOC program, its current status and to delve into some of the details related to successfully fulfilling the MOC process...

Purpose: To estimate radiation therapymedical physicist FTE needs based on procedure numbers and published medical physicist work survey data. Method and Materials: A spreadsheet was developed to combine procedure volumes requiring medical physicist effort with procedural time values extracted from the 2003 Abt survey and a previous survey on medic...

Purpose: The additional equipment and personnel costs of supplying Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy(IMRT) technology have caused many to question if the marginal gains in patient health‐related quality of life are worth the additional cost. A novel IMRT technology, helical tomotherapy, provides the opportunity to study cost and effectiveness f...

We found that supernatants of leukapheresis products (SLPs) of patients mobilized with granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) or the various components of SLPs (fibrinogen, fibronectin, soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 [VCAM-1], intercellular adhesion molecule-1 [ICAM-1], and urokinase plasminogen activator receptor [uPAR]) increase...