Washington University Radiation Oncology at AAPM 2018

Washington University Radiation Oncology faculty and staff have recently returned from 60th annual meeting of the American Association for Physics in Medicine (AAPM) in Nashville, TN, where members of the department were presenters or senior authors on over 50 abstracts about current research and clinical innovation at Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. “We had another record year in our presence at the AAPM annual meeting, both in the quantity and the impact of our presentations,” said Sasa Mutic, PhD, Vice-Chair of Medical Physics and Clinical Strategy, and Director of the Medical Physics Division. “I was particularly impressed with the diversity of our presenters, from summer students and other trainees to the majority of our attending physicists.”

This year, 42 of the accepted abstracts associated with Washington University authors were designated as oral presentations, and 25 as posters (20 ePosters, 5 general posters), an impressive showing at a conference with just over 2,600 presentations, fewer than half of which are designated as oral presentations. This year’s faculty and staff awards and recognitions include:

• Walter Bosch, DSc and Lakshmi Santanam, PhD – elected as Fellows of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine
• Geoffrey Hugo, PhD – co-author on a Top 3 SPARE Challenge Abstract “Data-Driven Respiratory Motion Compensation for 4D-CBCT Using Groupwise Deformable Registration”
• Tiezhi Zhang, PhD – Science Council Session winner “X-Ray Field Imaging with a Linear Scan X-Ray Source and Linear Detector Array”
• Arash Darafsheh, PhD – Abstract Selected for AAPM Science Highlights “Fiber Optic Dosimeters Based On Silver-Only Coated Hollow Waveguides for Radiation Therapy Dosimetry”
• Arash Darafsheh, PhD – AAPM Seed Grant Recipient “High-resolution radioluminescent dosimeters for concurrent dose and LET measurement in proton therapy”
• Jian Wu, PhD (PI: Hua Li)– winner of the Jack Krohmer Junior Investigator Competition (read more) “Selecting Predictive Genomic Biomarkers for Oropharyngeal Cancer Treatment Prediction by Use of Advanced Machine Learning Method”

Washington University Radiation Oncology also hosted an alumni reception for graduates of the department’s medical physics residency program, which celebrates the 25^th anniversary of its first graduating class this year. Over half of the graduates of the program attended the event.