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Person-Specific Organ Dosimetry in Radiation Protection: Do We Have the Necessary Computational Tools for a Paradigm Change?

Webinar
1 September 2022

 

Recording →

Moderator: Jenia Vassileva (IAEA)

Presenter: Xie George Xu (China)

About the webinar

Estimation of organ doses from internal and external exposures in health physics depends on computational models of the human body (phantoms), and Monte Carlo calculations ─ two tools that have seen drastic advancement recently.  Phantoms have evolved from simple stylized phantoms to more accurate voxel phantoms based on personal anatomical images to re-create the human body in 3D digital form. Using the latest deep-learning image segmentation tools involving convolutional neural networks, patient-specific phantoms can be created in a few minutes ready for Monte Carlo calculations of organ doses.

In the meanwhile, ‘near real-time’ Monte Carlo simulation, based on graphics processing unit (GPU), can reduce organ dose computing time from hours to less than several seconds. These technological advances suggest that radiation protection dosimetry may be ready to shift from the ICRP “Reference Man” paradigm that has been based on population-average anatomical and physiological assumptions for the past 60 years, to person-specific organ dosimetry. This webinar will cover these major computational tools for radiation protection dosimetry and discuss future directions.

Learning objectives

  1. To gain a historical perspective of computational human phantoms and Monte Carlo dose calculations;
  2. To learn about the latest research and development on patient-specific phantoms involving automatic multi-organ segmentation tools;
  3. To learn about the latest research and development on rapid Monte Carlo dose calculation tools involving GPU co-processors as well as virtual-source-modeling of CT and PET/CT scanner, radiotherapy linac, and those found in common radiation protection environments.    

Prof. Xie George Xu is a Professor and Director of the Institute of Nuclear Medical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China (Hefei, China).  Before recently relocating to China, he was the Edward E. Hood Endowed Chair Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, New York, USA). Prof. Xu has mentored 100 Ph.D and M.S. students in the U.S. and China.  Widely known for his work on “computational phantoms” and “advanced Monte Carlo simulations”, his publication list includes two books, 600 peer-reviewed papers/chapters/abstracts and 150 invited talks.

Prof. Xu is a fellow of American Nuclear Society (ANS), Health Physics Society (HPS), American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), as well as a council member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement (NCRP) and was a past president of the Council on Ionizing Radiation Measurements and Standards (CIRMS). He has served as a reviewer/editorial board member of Medical Physics, Physics in Medicine & Biology, and Radiation Protection Dosimetry for 20+ years. 

Prof. Xu and his team have developed commercial software tools (http://www.wisdom-tech.online/) including VirtualDose (a CT and IR patient dose reporting software), ARCHER (a GPU-based Monte Carlo dose computing software for treatment planning and dose QA verification), DeepViewer (an image segmentation and registration software tool), and DeepPlan (a treatment planning system).

Recent professional recognitions received by him include: CIRMS Randal S. Caswell Award for Distinguished Achievements (2015), HPS Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award (2018), ANS Arthur Holly Compton Award in Education (2020), ANS Rockwell Lifetime Achievement Award in Radiation Protection and Shielding (2020), AAPM Edith H. Quimby Award for Lifetime Achievement in Medical Physics (2020) and IUPESM Award of Merit in Medical Physics (2022).

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