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Radiation Oncology

Medical Physics

The Division of Medical Physics resides within the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center and & Research Institute’s Department of Radiation Oncology, and is staffed by board certified medical physicists and dosimetrists. Our highly trained and capable team is responsible for the supervision and direction of all technical processes related to the treatment of our cancer patients with radiation.

The responsibilities of the medical physicist include:

Protection of the patient and others from potentially harmful or excessive radiation.
Establishment of treatment protocols that ensure accurate patient dosimetry.
Measurement and characterization of radiation.
Determination of delivered dose.
Advancement of procedures necessary to ensure image quality.
Development and direction of quality assurance programs.

Additionally, the medical physicists serve as consultants to the radiation oncologists with regard to the treatment planning and delivery process. They also perform and publish clinically oriented research into ways to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of the entire radiation treatment process, and they teach the underlying physics of radiation therapy to the department’s physician and to the accredited training program medical physics residents.

For more information, we recommend the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Public Education Website, which addresses issues like: what do medical physicists do, the role a medical physicist plays in radiation therapy and diagnostic medical imaging, the history of medical physics and more.