The program is organized in accordance with the American Association of Physicists in Medicine Report, No. 90: Essentials and Guidelines for Hospital-Based Medical Physics Residency Training Programs, 2006. In the program, you will cover the following topics:
- Acceptance, commissioning, calibration and quality assurance of treatment and simulation equipment
- Radiation detectors
- Measurement and calculation of radiation dose
- Radiation treatment planning
- Design and fabrication of treatment aids
- Quality assurance of planning systems
- External beam treatment techniques, including 2D, 3D conformal, intensity modulated (IMRT) and image guided (IGRT) radiation therapy
- Low- and high-dose-rate brachytherapy
- Special procedures
- Radiation safety for both patients and radiation workers
- Room shielding designs
- Regulatory radiation safety guidelines
- Education of health professionals in radiation oncology physics
Program faculty offer courses, such as radiobiology, statistics and imaging physics. During your residency, you can also take other courses available at Rush University.
Program Schedule
The length of the program is three years. You will attend classes and clinical conferences, assist in performing various quality assurance tasks and participate in clinical research and development projects during your first year. At the beginning of your second year, you will start clinical rotations in various areas. By the end of your third year, you will have completed eight structured clinical rotations. A mentoring staff physicist will directly supervise you during your rotations and monitor your progress through performance evaluations.
Program Faculty
The Department of Radiation Oncology has nine PhD-level physicists and eight attending physicians. All physicians and physicists are either ABR certified or in the process of getting their certification. The faculty is active in clinical services, teaching and research. Our faculty members are excellent teachers; our medical residents have consistently ranked above the ninetieth percentile in the ACR in-service physics board exams in the past.
Facility and Equipment
The Department of Radiation Oncology has the following equipment:
- Large bore 4-D CT simulator
- Aria EMR
- Tomotherapy system
- TrueBeam STX unit for SRS and SBRT
- Two linear accelerators
- Varian GammaMed HDR unit with BrachyVision treatment planning system
- Pinnacle 3-D treatment planning system
- Eclipse treatment planning system
- Brainlab stereotactic radiosurgery planning (iPlan) and treatment system
- in vivo dosimetry systems
- Film dosimetry system
- 3-D data acquisition system
The department has the following active clinical and research programs:
- IGRT
- IMRT
- TBI
- SRS
- SBRT
- Brachytherapy
- Monte Carlo simulations
- Thermal imaging
- Scatter imaging
- Dose painting
- Contour segmentation
- Biological model-based treatment planning applications in radiation therapy
Program Delivery
The program director, in collaboration with the medical physics residency committee, is responsible for the administration of the program. It is the program director's responsibility to advise residents, coordinate clinical rotations and didactic training, and to evaluate and promote the program. The committee meets regularly to review the progress of the residents and the operation of the program. All clinical training takes place in the Department of Radiation Oncology. The Office of Graduate Medical Education monitors and reviews the quality of the program and provides oversight to assure its adherence to the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Education Programs standards.
Accreditation Summary
The medical physics residency program is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Education Programs: One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740. Phone: (571) 298-1239.