Medical Physics Seminar – Monday, April 11, 2022
Radiation therapy-related late effects
Rebecca Howell, PhD
Professor, Radiation Physics
Director, Radiation Dosimetry Services
Director, Late Effects Research Group
Institution: MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Rebecca Howell will present a discussion of methods to reconstruct doses for epidemiological studies of late effects from cancer radiotherapy for large cancer survivor cohorts. She will describe the sources of information and steps for dose reconstruction; discusses different levels of dose reconstruction such as average organ dose, dose to second cancer site, and body-region dose; and presents issues of record quality and dose uncertainty. She will present data describing dose reconstruction for the heart and colorectum. She will describe radiation-therapy related late cardiovascular disease as an example of how reconstructed dosimetry data are used to develop dose response and risk prediction models.