Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

To address the labor-intensive nature of Deformable Image Registration (DIR) QA quantitatively through the use of independent software and in-house scripting for lung and Head & Neck (H&N) sites for clinical use.

Professional

We investigate the feasibility of using daily setup free-breathing cone-beam CT (CBCT) as a functional imaging modality to generate longitudinal ventilation maps throughout the treatment course, with the goal of detecting emerging lung function impairment dur...

Organ‑level breast dosimetry is essential for developing robust dose-response models of subsequent breast cancer (SBC) risk in female childhood cancer survivors. Historically, epidemiologic studies relied on surrogate metrics such as prescription dose due to...

Professional

Understanding of medical physics is essential for safe and effective radiation oncology practice. This study evaluates current instructional practices for physics education in radiation oncology physician residency programs following the release of the AAPM/A...

Micro-ultrasound (microUS) provides high-resolution visualization of the prostate for interventional procedures; however, the scarcity of annotated datasets limits the development of robust automated segmentation methods. This study leverages a foundation-mod...

Therapy Physics

Deep learning-based image reconstruction has shown substantial promise for addressing the highly non-uniform and under-sampled projections encountered in nonstop gated CBCT (ngCBCT). However, due to the statistical nature of data-driven learning and inherent...

Therapy Physics

TH- Brachytherapy

This work presents a public project on the Cancer Genomics Cloud (CGC) platform for reproducible, out-of-the-box application of analysis workflows for pre-trained radiological and radiotherapy AI models; the first and only such project supporting analysis of...

Cs-131 tile implant–based intracranial brachytherapy requires coordinated interdisciplinary efforts spanning imaging, source management, implantation, post-implant planning, and radiation safety. The extent of inter-institutional variability in these practice...

The aims of this project were to (1) develop and apply a process to optimize 3D-printing processes specifically for tissue-equivalent small-field dosimetry phantoms and, (2) design and test a 3D-printed phantom for single-isocenter multi-target (SIMT) stereot...

To evaluate the safety and efficiency of respiratory-gated radiotherapy by using a long-short-term memory (LSTM) model and its hybridized version with time-domain cross-correlation (TCC) to adapt to breathing motion irregularities without remodeling.

Treatment planning system (TPS) beam modelling is identified as the largest cause of independent dosimetry audit failure. This study aims to develop and validate a universal beam model (UBM) specific to single-iso multi-target (SIMT) stereotactic radiosurgery...

Dose accumulation using deformable image registration (DIR) enables a more accurate evaluation of delivered dose in adaptive radiotherapy, allowing evaluation of discrepancies between planned and delivered treatments. However, different DIR algorithms produce...

Automation in external beam radiotherapy chart checks improves standardization, efficiency, and error reduction. Our academic institution, consisting of approximately 200 users over 7 campuses, partnered with a vendor to integrate institution-developed automa...

T1ρ dispersion imaging is an emerging MRI technique for characterizing muscle tissue in aging, fibrosis, and metabolic conditions. However, the requirement for multiple independent repetitions at varying spin-lock frequencies (FSL) and spin-lock times (TSL) m...

To develop a slice-specific CT organ dose library using Monte Carlo radiation transport simulations on a set of newborn, infant, and toddler (NIT) computational phantoms containing newly developed age-specific skeletal tissue models. This dose library forms t...

To evaluate whether two intrafraction CBCT-based motion corrections are sufficient and necessary to ensure accurate target coverage in online adaptive stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) of prostate cancer.

TheraSphere Global Dosimetry Steering Committee (DSC) defines five clinical scenarios for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) using Yttrium-90 (Y-90) glass microsphere–based transarterial radioembolization (TARE), accounting for disease extent, tu...

To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of radiotherapy clinical workflows, we developed and deployed three vendor-specific Event-Driven Framework (EDF) automation applications that reduce manual intervention and enhance communications among therapists, p...

Current AAPM guidelines (TG-104 and MPPG 2.b) primarily address kV or standard MV portal beams for imaging and are not well suited for low-dose-rate 2.5 MV imaging beams, particularly in establishing dose and image quality baselines. This study developed and...

Traditional patient-specific QA in proton therapy requires detector-based measurements that consume beam time and delay workflow. This study presents a calibration-based machine log analysis system enabling automated, measurement-free verification of delivere...

To test the hypothesis that geometric metrics measured by the enhanced-couch Machine Performance Check (MPC) can serve as a surrogate to predict off-axis isocentricity failure.

An improved imager and software (HyperSight on a Varian TrueBeam linac) feature a larger detector panel and increase the maximum gantry rotation speed for CBCT imaging to 1.5 revolutions per minute (rpm). While enabling faster acquisition, its impact on free-...

This work commissioned a manual beam gating procedure for breast DIBH treatment on Ethos and Halcyon (O-ring) platforms, which included dosimetric consistency evaluation with an End-to-End (E2E) test and quantifying the response time of manual beam-hold using...

A growing number of patients with increasingly many brain metastases (BMs) are being treated with stereotactic radiosurgery. Artificial intelligence-assisted gross tumor volumes (AIGTVs) can aid the radiation oncologist in contouring the gross tumor volumes (...

Report commissioning and initial clinical experience using automated breath hold (BH) delivery with Elekta Unity’s Comprehensive Motion Management (CMM).

To investigate the role of interplay effects between respiratory motion and proton scanning beam interactions on free-breathing proton lattice radiotherapy (PLT) plans relative to dose distributions from static calculations.

To enhance the image quality of low-resolution 3D cine magnetic resonance (MR) images acquired at 2Hz by applying two single-image super-resolution deep-learning neural networks, so that the enhanced 3D cine images serve as better templates for more accurate...

Longitudinal deformable registration is crucial for accurate dose accumulation in magnetic resonance guided adaptive radiotherapy (MRgART). This is particularly difficult for pancreatic cancer, with both substantial inter-fraction spatial shifts and intensity...

Dose–volume metrics alone incompletely explains mandibular osteoradionecrosis (ORN) following proton therapy. LET-based aggregate approaches such as dose–LET volume histograms (DLVH) implicitly assume uniform LET contribution across dose levels. This study in...

Hypofractionated proton therapy for pancreatic cancer is limited by the proximity of radiosensitive abdominal organs. Single-energy Bragg peak (SEBP) proton delivery enables ultra-high dose-rate (UHDR) irradiation and may facilitate FLASH compatible treatment...

Quantify dosimetric differences between original online adaptive plans (adapt-to-position [ATP] or adapt-to-shape [ATS]) and baseline shift (BLS)–corrected plans for prostate MRgRT on 1.5 Tesla MR-Linac. BLS is a fast, during treatment, replan applying virtua...

To evaluate a high-resolution CMOS 2D detector array (myQA SRS, IBA GmbH, Germany) as an efficient alternative to radiochromic films (RCF) for IMRT commissioning.

While 30% of lung cancer patients cannot tolerate breath-hold, free-breathing(FB) proton pencil-beam-scanning(PBS) deliveries compromise target coverage from the interplay effects of large motion. This study presents a novel FB-gated spirometer-based respirat...

Proton LATTICE radiotherapy (LRT), a spatially fractionated radiotherapy (SFRT), delivers high dose to intratumoral vertices while maintaining low valley dose. Single-field optimization (SFO) is robust in preserving peak-to-valley patterns but may increase en...

Inferior CBCT quality from artifacts or incomplete data can compromise anatomy visualization during Image-Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT), increasing uncertainty in target localization and organ-at-risk positioning. Improving CBCT reconstruction can enable more re...

Accurate localization of brachytherapy needles in transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) is essential for high-quality treatment planning, yet remains challenging due to speckle noise, needle shadowing, and variable image quality. This work presents a robust, geometry...

Motion-resolved 4D MRI is essential for assessing abdominal tumor and organ motion, but gradient nonlinearity (GNL) causes geometric distortion that reduces spatial fidelity and motion accuracy. This study evaluates GNL correction for 4D MRI on a 1.5T MR Lina...

Accurate delineation of Head and Neck (H&N) Gross Tumor Volumes (GTV) is a prerequisite for effective radiotherapy, represents a significant cognitive challenge, and may contribute to an observed outcomes deficit between high-volume and low-volume H&N radioth...

Ultra-high-dose-rate (UHDR) proton irradiation may spare normal tissue (FLASH effect), but PBS proton dose rate is limited by machine constraints (minimum MU/spot and dwell time). Intra-field interruptions can leave sub-threshold MU for remaining delivery, de...

Tumor hypoxia drives radio-resistance in Head & Neck cancer (HNC) and can guide radiation dose de-escalation. Tumor hypoxia can be imaged using 18F-fluoromisonidazole (FMISO-PET; non-standard-of-care). Because hypoxia drives glycolysis, we assessed correlatio...

To develop a kV-triggered short-arc intrafraction motion monitoring technique for prostate SBRT VMAT by enabling on-treatment reconstruction of a 3D prostate and nearby organs-at-risk (OARs) volume within seconds. We propose an iterative short-arc CBCT recons...

To assess how low-pitch spiral 4DCT impacts image quality, particularly noise, artifacts, and slice sensitivity profile (SSP), to help overcome the limitations of this technique.

Electronic portal imaging devices (EPID) are widely used clinically for patient-specific quality assurance (QA). Anticipating potential failures can help prioritize measurements to assess the need for plan revision and avoid downstream workflow disruptions. W...

To determine whether natural-respiration breath hold (NRBH) should be used to freeze organ motion rather than deep-inspiration breath hold (DIBH) in abdominal cancer treatments, as NRBH should be more reproducible, retaining organ normal size, shape, and posi...

Early assessment of radiotherapy response is essential for adaptive treatment planning and digital-twin development. Longitudinal quantification of tumor volume and mass changes depends on reliable deformable image registration (DIR), which remains challengin...

With the number of proton centers increasing, each facing intermittent downtime or need for renovations. Developing optimal approaches to maintain uninterrupted treatment is essential to preserve clinical outcomes. This study outlines key risk factors, workfl...

Accurate segmentation of the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery is essential for cardiac sparing in thoracic radiotherapy, particularly for lung cancer patients receiving high-dose radiation near the heart. However, the LAD is thin, low-contrast,...

This study proposes a transformer-based deep learning framework for markerless lung tumor tracking that improves localization accuracy, robustness, and computational efficiency of real-time intrafraction motion management for seamless clinical integration.

Phase II and III clinical trials establish standards of care in radiation oncology; however, achieving equivalent clinical outcomes in routine practice depends on the reproducible implementation of trial protocols. We systematically evaluated whether publishe...

Markerless lung tumor tracking has the potential to reduce target margins and improve organ-at-risk (OAR) sparing during radiotherapy. We previously proposed a deep learning–based target decomposition approach for real-time markerless lung tumor tracking. Thi...

Fast and reliable optimization remains a major bottleneck in automated and adaptive radiotherapy treatment planning. Most commercial and research planning systems rely on gradient-based optimization methods, which can converge slowly near the optimal solution...

Therapy Physics

Therapy Physics

Conventional diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) uses single-shot echo planar imaging (ssEPI), which is highly susceptible to geometric distortion, limiting its use for radiotherapy guidance on MR-LINAC systems. Turbo-spin-echo (TSE) and multi-shot EPI (msEPI) DWI r...

Therapy Physics

Time-resolved volumetric MRI reconstructed from minimal k-space samples is critical for motion-adaptive radiotherapy to capture real-time deformable motion. We propose a Gaussian representation-based one-shot learning framework that models patient anatomy and...

Iodine maps derived from Dual-Energy CT (DECT) provide critical biological information for radiotherapy treatment planning; however, conventional clinical iodine maps often mistakenly include bones due to insufficient X-ray spectral separation. In this study,...

Simulation-free (SimF) workflows for MR-guided radiotherapy demonstrate potential to streamline treatment initiation by eliminating dedicated simulation scans. We evaluated the feasibility of implementing an SimF approach for single fraction liver SBRT on the...

Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced (DCE) MRI provides functional information on tumor vascularity and perfusion, useful in characterizing tumors and gauging treatment response. We introduce an open-source extension to pyCERR for extracting non-parametric features of c...

To identify blood-bearing organs whose mean blood dose is significantly associated with OS in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and to evaluate the feasibility of sparing these organs during treatment planning.