Date: Thursday October 8, 2015  at noon
Location: 223 Herman Brown Hall, Rice University

• 1^st talk (20 min): Hydrogel fiducial markers for proton range verification

Proton range verification is a very important issue in proton radiation therapy since critical organs can be located just beyond the proton range. ¹⁸O, ⁶³Cu and ⁶⁸Zn were studies as proton range verification materials since they are strongly activated by low energy protons and decay with positron emissions. We used some of these elements to develop patient implantable hydrogel fiducial markers which are PET visible. They can be used as universal fiducial markers due to their CT/PET/MRI/US visibility and also as the proton therapy/range verification markers.

• 2^nd talk (20 min): Hybrid bimetallic nanoparticles for radiotherapy and molecular imaging

We developed hybrid bi-metallic nanoparticles – Zn@Au (Zn core and Au shell). When irradiated with protons using a medical cyclotron, the Zn cores are activated to decay with positron emission with relatively long half-lives. Therefore, PET imaging shows the in-vivo distribution of those injected nanoparticles. The developed Zn@Au nanoparticles have near identical radiosensitization as gold nanoparticles (GNPs) of the same size. Therefore, the Zn@Au nanoparticles may enable PET image guided GNP mediated radiation therapy as well as molecular imaging.

• 3^rd talk (10 min): Introduction to Oklahoma State University Medical Physics Program

https://research.okstate.edu/venture-i

http://physics.okstate.edu/www/medical-physics.html

http://physics.okstate.edu/

• QA session (10 min)

Date: Thursday September 17, 2015  at noon
Location: 223 Herman Brown Hall, Rice University