A nice initiative and some nice recognition from IOP for Physics in Medicine and Biology reviews

 Invited lecture @ ECMP 2022

I was invited by the IAPM to deliver a lecture at the ECMP conference in Dublin in August 2022. It was nice to talk about my research and clinical experience, my start in the Medical Physics field and the late Prof. Wil van der Putten. Also my perspectives having worked in both research and clinical roles. 

A selection of slides are shown below.

Radiation Shielding calculation and visualisation software development

 

Recently I have been working on Java software to create a integrated app for radiation shielding room design calculation and visualization.

 The aim is to replace the use of separate room design images and spreadsheets (for calculations) with a single application which will:

(1) Allow the user to load a room design drawing

(2) Click on the position of radiation sources and room walls

(3)  Present the user with a radiation heat map accounting for room wall shielding material (usually Pb) and thickness in line with IIR / IR(ME)R limits

 

An overview of the software design

The radiation shielding calculations are based on BIR report and account for poly-energetic beams using coefficient fitting methods.User inputs will include: annual workload, kV, scatter factor, occupancy and the dose rate constraint required.

 

Example of calculation of attenuation in arbitrary shield positions in the software

 The code will then calculate the distance from the source(s) to each pixel in the image  and the Kinc (mSv / year), Broad Beam transmission factor and thickness of material required to meet the user defined contraint (of, for example, 0.3 mSv / year).

 

 

Example of integration of room design and radiation heat-map overlay in software (in development)