Dr. Eric Vandervoort
Professor
Department of Physics
Carleton University
Canada
Biography
Eric Vandervoort, Ph.D., MCCPM * Medical Physicist: The Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre * Adjunct Research Professor: Department of Physics, Carleton University * Assistant Professor: Division of Medical Physics, Department of Radiology, University of Ottawa
Research Interest
My research has focused primarily on medical physics applications within stereotactic ablative radiosurgery. I am interested in the accurately modelling detector response in complex composite clinical fields. Evaluating the sensitivity of the delivered dose to clinically realistic uncertainties present in a patient treatment for complex delivery systems such as volumetric modulated arc therapy and the CyberKnife robotic radiosurgery system is also a research focus. These uncertainties include: propagation of uncorrected detector response into the data used to model the radiation beam in the planning system; errors in the position of the fields (e.g., incorrect calibration of the position and speed of multileaf collimators, jaws and gantry); and changes in the patient anatomy due to tumour shrinkage, growth, and tumour movement during the respiratory cycle. Recently, the Ottawa Hospital has purchased a GammaPod breast radiotherapy system and a dedicated radiation oncology MRI-simulation suite, both of which are slated for installation in 2018. The GammaPod uses a rotating array of 36 cobalt-60 sources with a dynamically translating couch to deliver accelerated partial breast irradiation to patients in the prone position. MR-based treatment planning would be very useful for accurate delineation of target tissues for this system. Projects associated with this goal include: prototyping patient immobilization which is compatible with MR and treatment on the GammaPod unit; implementation and validation of MR-based dose calculation planning using Monte Carlo models and phantom measurements. We are also interested implementing in-room image guidance for this system to verify patient position at the time of treatment.
