Radiophysics and Radioprotection

The Radiation Physics and Radiation Protection research group carries out applied research on three fields of application of ionizing radiation in medicine: radiation therapy, nuclear medicine, and radiology. This research is intended to solve gaps of knowledge in the safe application of radiation in medicine due to new technology, new techniques, new procedures, or the application of new legislation.

Main Lines of Research

• Artificial intelligence applied to radiotherapy DVH prediction and to radiotherapy treatment plan optimization. (Gallego Franco, Pedro; Perez-Alija Fernandez, Jaime; Tejedor Aguilar, Natalia).
• Clinical Audits in Radiotherapy. Line shared with the Radiation Oncology department. (Jornet Sala, Nuria).
• Standardization in Nuclear Medicine. (Ruiz Martinez, Agustin; Barcelo Pages, Marta).
• Diagnostic Reference Levels (DRL) by a radiation dose management solution. (Barcelo Pages, Marta; Ruiz Martinez, Agustin).
• Biological Dosimetry. (Carrasco De Fez, Pablo; Perez-Alija Fernandez, Jaime).
• Clinical transmission EPID-based in vivo dosimetry. Currently we have an agreement with Sun Nuclear Co. to clinically implement and suggest improvements on the SunCHECK® quality assurance platform in radiotherapy, which includes treatment unit quality assurance and patient-related quality assurance, including PerFraction® software, used for in vivo dosimetry with the electronic portal device of linear accelerators. (Anson Marcos, Cristina; Jornet Sala, Nuria).

Scientific Challenges

• To make radiotherapy treatment planning less person-dependent, to decrease variability, and to optimize treatment plans.
• To define a strategy to perform clinical audits in radiotherapy at a regional level that could be escalated to national and international level.
• To set up clinical audits in radiotherapy in Catalonia.
• To standardize quantitatively image acquisition in PET and SPECT imaging.
• To get all imaging modalities integrated in the dose management system provided from the Catalan government and to derive DRL values for all the equipment at HSCSP.
• To manage DRLs and compare them against regional, national, and international values.
• To update the dose-biological effect calibration curve, relating chromosomal aberrations to radiation absorbed dose, based on modern automatic systems.
• To derive an easy test to classify irradiated individuals from a potential accident into those that would require special following and treatment and those that were exposed to non-critical doses.
• To derive clinically relevant tolerance actions for EPID-based in vivo dosimetry on each anatomical treatment site in radiation therapy.

Contact

Pablo Carrasco de Fez
pcarrasco@santpau.cat