Paper on Lung Tumor Treatment Earns Honors for Industrial Engineering Team

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From left, W. Art Chaovalitwongse, Chunyan Duan, Phawis Thammasorn and Xiao Liu

A team of industrial engineering faculty and students was recognized this month for their work to make radiation treatment of lung tumors more effective.

A team led by W. Art Chaovalitwongse, 21st Century Research Leadership Chair in Industrial Engineering; assistant professor Xiao Liu; visiting post-doc and assistant professor, Chunyan Duan; and doctoral student Phawis Thammasorn, collaborated with a team from the University of Washington Medical Center to present their joint precision radiotherapy work.

Their research predicts the treatment response of radiation therapy in lung tumors to inform risk-adaptive treatment strategies.

The team's work has received the Best in Physics Award in the Joint Imaging-Therapy track and will be presented at the 60th Annual Meeting & Exhibition of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine.

"The team is among the pioneering groups to develop a data analytics framework to predict response patterns during and post-treatment," Chaovalitwongse said. "The work is the first necessary step to precision imaging and prediction radiotherapy and pave a way to the Cancer Breakthroughs 2020."

The Annual Meeting and Exhibition of AAPM is considered the world's largest program of scientific, educational and professional presentations and exhibits in the medical physics community.

The American Association of Physicists in Medicine is a scientific and professional organization, founded in 1958, and composed of more than 8,000 scientists whose clinical practice is dedicated to ensuring accuracy, safety and quality in the use of radiation in medical procedures such as medical imaging and radiation therapy.

Generally known as medical physicists, and uniquely positioned across medical specialties these scientists have the unique responsibility of connecting the physician to the patient through the use of radiation producing technology in both diagnosing and treatment. The responsibility of the medical physicist is to assure that the radiation prescribed in imaging and radiation therapy is delivered accurately and safely.

One of the primary goals of AAPM is the identification and implementation of improvements in patient safety for the medical use of radiation in imaging and radiation therapy.