AAPM Newsletter | September/October 2020 Vo l u m e 4 5 , N o . 5
SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT AAPM INTERNATIONAL TRAINING AND RESEARCH COORDINATION SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT S o m a y e h G h o l a m i , P h D | Te h r a n U n i v e r s i t y o f M e d i c a l S c i e n c e s ( T U M S )
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y name is Somayeh Gholami, PhD, assistant professor at Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Tehran, Iran. I have ten years of work experience as a medical physicist at a radiotherapy center in my country. In recent years, my country has been transitioning from conventional radiotherapy to more technologically advanced radiotherapy techniques. During this transition, education and training of medical physicists is the most critical aspect in advancing the field of medical physics. AAPM has always been a pioneer in medical physics education worldwide by publishing excellent reports and providing different scholarships and grants. From February through June of 2020, AAPM provided an opportunity for me to take advantage of work experience at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) under the supervision of Dr. Steven Morill. AAPM provided this grant through the International Training and Research Coordination Subcommittee (ITRCS). I had the honor of being one of the five recipients of this scholarship in 2019. I appreciate the support of all the committee members, especially Dr. Joanna Cygler and Dr. E. Ishmael Parsai, for direct communications and assistance in facilitating this work experience.
Email: somygholami@gmail.com
“I had a great experience at UAMS. I think that the opportunity to visit and exchange knowledge between medical physicists from different countries with different backgrounds is one of the best educational programs in AAPM, and it can lead to a worldwide improvement in treatment quality for patients.”
Dr. Steven Morrill, chief medical physicist at Radiation Oncology Department of UAMS, kindly took care of my application. He agreed to support my visa application and provided the opportunity for me to get involved in routine medical physics duties at UAMS. The radiation oncology department at UAMS is outfitted with innovative technology that includes Varian TrueBeam linear accelerators, an ACCURAY Tomotherapy unit, a 4D CT simulator, Brainlab ExacTrac, HDR Brachytherapy, and Perfexion Gamma knife. High precision Linac-based radiosurgery of cranial and spinal lesions along with intra-fraction motion management is very popular at UAMS. A good combination of clinical and research interests among the physicists and physicians at UAMS encouraged me to conduct a collaborative research project with the medical physicist experts. We performed a study on “Localization errors in stereotactic radiosurgery treatment using 3D Lucy phantom.” In this study, different imaging techniques such as kV/MV, CBCT, and ExacTracTM were used to evaluate the IGRT errors during Linac-based SRS treatments.
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