Medical Physics Track
Medical physics is a field that applies concepts and methods of physics to medicine. The research focus of the Medical Physics Track in the BME Graduate Program at UT Southwestern is the development of cutting-edge imaging and therapeutic tools to help cancer radiotherapy treatment.
Specific areas include, but are not limited to:
- Medical image reconstruction and application in radiotherapy
- Radiotherapy treatment planning and adaptive replanning
- High-performance computing for radiotherapy, such as Monte Carlo radiation transport simulation
- Modeling of organ motion
- Development of advanced imaging and therapeutic approaches
- Modeling radiobiological phenomena and understanding the mechanisms
The Student Experience
The Medical Physics track is offered to students who have undergraduate training in physics, engineering, computer science, or related physical sciences who would like to establish a career in medical physics research or clinical service. Students in the medical physics track experience a wide spectrum of training activities to complement their research, including coursework in radiological physics, imaging, anatomy and physiology, seminars, journal clubs, and clinical rotations.
Full accreditation by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Education Programs (CAMPEP) is in progress with four of six courses required by CAMPEP accredited to date. We are actively working on accrediting the other two required courses.
Track Director
Associate Professor
Faculty
Assistant Professor
Training Track: Medical Physics
Research Interests: Radiation therapy treatment planning, optimization techniques and algorithms, artificial intelligence technology development and applications
Professor
Research Interests: Cloud and GPU-based high-performance computing in medical physics and imaging; automatic radiotherapy treatment planning; adaptive radiotherapy; image-guided radiotherapy; low-dose and dynamic-cone-beam CT
Associate Professor
Training Track: Biomedical and Molecular Imaging
Research Interests: Tomographic image reconstruction; cone-beam computed tomography; image-guided radiation therapy; medical imaging processing
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Machine learning, Immunogenomics, and Tumor genomics
Assistant Professor
Training Track: Medical Physics
Research Interests: Statistical genetics and statistical computations
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: 3D/4D CT/CBCT reconstruction and analysis, 4D MRI reconstruction, artificial intelligence and automation in radiation therapy, biomechanical modeling and finite element analysis, deformable registration and its application in image-guided radiation therapy, radiotherapy dose calculation and plan optimization
Associate Faculty
These faculty members do not accept graduate students. They participate in teaching, co-mentoring, exam and dissertation committees, and all other program activities.
Research Interests: Adaptive radiation therapy, MRI-based radiation therapy
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Evaluate the use of newly designed biodegradable stints to treat pulmonary artery stenosis
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Image processing in radiation therapy; deformable-image registration; radiation-dose calculations; robotic control for patient positioning
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Quality assurance and student learning in Virtual vs clinical environment. Isocenter localization correlation between Radiation Therapist and Masters education program radiation therapy students. A comparison and agreement study.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests:Tissue-response modeling in radiation therapy; brachytherapy
Professor
Research Interests: General psychiatry, aging and geriatric issues, new applications of lead placement in ECT and novel treatments of major depressive disorder including magnetic seizure therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation, deep brain stimulation, and vagus nerve stimulation
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Adaptive radiation therapy; treatment-plan optimization; radiation-dose calculations
Professor
Research Interests: Tissue-response modeling in radiation therapy; stereotactic radiation therapy
Assistant Professor
Research Interests:
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Biomedical optics, In Vivo cell tracking, Optical tomography-guided radiation therapy and Ultra-high dose rate irradiation
Associate Professor
Research Interests: High-performance computing; infrastructure for radiation therapy; radiobiological effects
