Physics department
Mission Statement
“The Physics department at the Hermitage Medical Clinic contributes to maintain and improve the quality, safety and cost-effectiveness of healthcare services through patient-oriented activities. This requires expert action, involvement or advice regarding the specification, selection, acceptance testing, commissioning, quality assurance/control for optimised clinical use of medical devices. Hence minimising patient risk and maximising protection from associated physical agents (e.g., x-rays, electromagnetic fields, radionuclides) including the prevention of unintended or accidental exposures”
Physics Staff members:
Mohamed Galal Ibrahim – Head of Physics Department
Aine Maxwell – Senior Physicist
Catherine Rahill – Senior Physicist
Ismail Ahmed – Senior Physicist
James Connolly – Senior Physicist
Caroline Banahan – Physicist
Mellissa Gunnoo – Physicist
Natasha Deans – Physicist
Tapihwa Mabvaro – Physicist
Services Provided by the Physics Department
Physics department provides service for:
Radiotherapy
- Acceptance and commissioning (LINACs/TPSs/Detectors)
- Quality assurance for different machines
- Planning
- 3DCRT
- IMRT
- SRS and SBRT using Cyberknife TPS
- Patient specific QA
- SRS
- SBRT
- IMRT
- 3DCRT complex plans
- I-125 Brachytherapy
- Planning
- Seed calibration and tracking
- Sr-90 stability checks for different detectors assemblies
- Research and development
- Education and staff training
Radiology and Nuclear Medicine
- Provide medical physics support in;
- Diagnostic Radiology – general radiology, fluoroscopy, dental, mammography, CT, ultrasound and MRI
- Interventional Radiology
- Cardiology
- Nuclear Medicine (Radiopharmacy, SPECT/CT, PET/CT
- Radiotherapy kV imaging
- Medical Physics Expert in Diagnostic Imaging
- Quality assurance and optimisation of ionising and non-ionising equipment
- Management of seal and unseal radioactive sources
- Research and development
- Education and staff training
Radiation Protection
- Radiation dose calculations, staff radiation monitoring, shielding calculations
- Support and training of Radiation Safety Officers (RSOs)
- Radiation protection training of hospital staff
- Point of contact for staff and Radiation Protection Advisor
- RSO for Radiotherapy
- RSO for Nuclear Medicine
List of publication and scientific activities:
- Protecting a CT simulator room to accommodate a Cyberknife facility (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25855074)
- Dosimetric and mechanical characteristics of a commercial dynamic mMLC used in SRS (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21859024)
- Pathway for Scanning Patients with MR Conditional Implantable Cardioverter-Difibrillators (Poster) – Irish Association of Physicists in Medicine (IAPM) Annual Scientific Meeting 2015
- Cyberknife Prostate planning and QA (Poster) – Irish Association of Physicists in Medicine (IAPM) Annual Scientific Meeting 2015
- Comparison of 3D and 4D Radiotherapy Planning Techniques (Poster) – Irish Association of Physicists in Medicine (IAPM) Annual Scientific Meeting 2015
- Cyberknife Prostate Planning & QA, Physics Overview (Presentation) – Current Treatments for Prostate Cancer Symposium Hermitage Medical Clinic Saturday 11th October 2014
- Implementation of Cyberknife into Clinical Practice (Poster) –International conference on radiation medicine (ICRM), Riyadh, KSA 2014
- To Implement 2D Array in IMRT QA (Poster) – Irish Association of Physicists in Medicine (IAPM) Annual Scientific Meeting 2013
- IMRT using XiO® from start to QA –Prostate Study (Presentation) – Biennial TPS Users Meeting, Europe, Africa, Latin America & Middle East, September 2012, Lisbon, Portugal
- Development of Stereotactic Treatment Techniques (Poster) – IPEM meeting 2011