A Carleton professor has been appointed as a Canada Research Chair and will receive funding for his research involving radiation and how it interacts with matter, with possible uses in cancer treatment.
Rowan Thomson, an assistant professor in the university’s department of physics, is now a Canada Research Chair in Radiotherapy Physics.
The distinction recognizes research excellence at Canadian universities. The award is part of a five year, $1 million Canada Research Chair investment at Carleton for research in radiotherapy and space robotics, according to a press release. The university now has 24 Canada Research Chairs.
“I was extremely excited to have more time devoted to research,” Thomson said.
Thomson uses computational and theoretical physics to study how radiation affects different types of matter.
Her focus is on medical physics, and specifically radiation therapy.
“Many cancer patients receive radiation therapy as part of their treatment, and the role of physicists in that is to learn about how radiation interacts with matter,” she said.
There are other approaches besides computer simulations to studying radiation’s interaction with matter. Some scientists will use water or various plastics that resemble biological tissue, she said.
These methods can measure dose (the amount of energy that was deposited by radiation) but computational methods can show more of the process by which that energy was deposited, and which mechanisms of the radiation did the depositing, she said.
Thomson said she became involved in medical physics after completing her PhD in theoretical high-energy physics, in an area called superstring theory.
“After that, I decided to do something with more tangible benefits, and so looked to apply my knowledge in physics to these medical type problems,” she said.
Working with a team from Carleton, Thomson helped develop BrachyDose.
BrachyDose is a computer simulation code used with brachytherapy, a form of radiation therapy where a radiation source is placed inside or next to an area requiring treatment.
“The idea with these brachytherapy treatments is that we’re maximizing cancer cell radiation exposure and minimizing normal tissue radiation exposure,” Thomson said. “BrachyDose is a code used to model these treatments and calculate the energy deposited in tissues by the radiation.”
“The technique they use for doing treatment and evaluation right now involves lots of approximations. We’re trying to get more accurate dose calculations,” she said.
This summer she said she expects the treatment system to be alongside the existing treatment in the city.
“Physicists are involved in many aspects of health care, including radiation therapy,” she said. “It plays a large role in medicine and I think it will keep growing.”
