Eric C. Ford, PhD

Medical physics patient consults are increasingly used to support patient understanding during radiotherapy and yet there is no consensus in the medical physics community as to what communications methods are most effective. We characterized patient-generated...

Manual plan checking is time-consuming and prone to variability across reviewers. To improve consistency and reliability in the plan-check workflow, we developed a fully automated RayStation plan-check system that performs more than 30 checks across eight key...

The underlying mechanisms of radiation-induced lymphocyte depletion are not fully understood. Our goal is to determine if the observed depletion in circulating lymphocytes after radiotherapy is solely due to cell kill, or if changes in cell migration dynamics...

A web-based quality assurance (QA) management platform can reduce clinic hardware and software needs while streamlining QA workflows through improved accessibility, trend tracking, and automated failure notifications. This study reports on the implementation...

VMAT total body irradiation (TBI) planning is complex and time-intensive, involving multiple isocenters, junction management, and iterative hotspot control. Many automation approaches still require repeated user interaction, limiting efficiency gains. This wo...

Open-source radiotherapy quality assurance (OSQA) tools are increasingly available and offer potential value in resource-constrained settings. However, clinical adoption remains limited by gaps in validation, standardization, and implementation guidance, rath...

To determine optimal scan and reconstruction parameters of a novel dual-energy CT (DECT) scanner for radiotherapy treatment planning across different patient scenarios.

Therapy Physics

Prospective Hazard Analysis (PHA) plays an increasingly central role in modern radiation therapy, spurred by the formation and publication of AAPM Task Group 100 in 2016 [Huq MedPhys 2016]. TG 100 identified that many errors that occur in radiation oncology a...

The purpose of this work was to develop a user-friendly software package that could be used as a simulation and training tool for brachytherapy. This web-based tool was designed particularly to meet the needs of students, residents and clinicians who may not...