Radiation Oncology Therapy Physics CAMPEP Residency

Training Environment

Our residency program aims to provide residents with a comprehensive clinical and academic training in all areas of therapeutic physics by taking advantage of the clinical and academic resources of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Clinical Facilities

Clinical facilities include state-of-the-art treatment machines, treatment planning systems, QA software/phantoms, and dosimetric equipment, including:

  • Four linear accelerators (two Varian Truebeam, Trilogy, and Ethos) with multi-leaf collimators. These units are commissioned and used for SBRT, IMRT, IGRT, VMAT, total body irradiation, and total skin electron treatment. All linacs are equipped with CBCT.  Ethos is commissioned for online adaptive radiation therapy
  • Eclipse treatment planning system (version 15.6) available to all users over Citrix. This equipment provides treatment planning for external beam radiation therapy and brachytherapy
  • Leksell Icon (Elekta) gamma knife unit for stereotactic radiosurgery. This unit is equipped with a CBCT and can also be used for fractionated radiosurgery
  • Three workstations installed with Leksell GammaPlan treatment planning system for gamma knife stereotactic radiosurgery
  • Siemens SOMATOM Definition AS CT Simulator
  • Robust Brachytherapy program: HDR afterloader; interstitial (Ir-192) brachytherapy sources, prostate seed implant, Intrabeam IORT, eye plaques, and intravascular brachytherapy (IVBT)
  • Variseed implant workstation for prostate seed implants
  • Dosimetry and QA Equipment: A variety NIST-traceable ionization chambers including Farmer, A16, pinpoint, well-type, and parallel plate chambers, electrometers, Gafchromic film and Epson scanner, OSLD, Mobius, MapCheck, ArcCheck, SRS ArcCheck, IC Profiler, IBA blue phantom, anthropomorphic phantoms (pelvis, thorax, Brain, and dynamic motion phantom)
  • Data analytic software including DoseLab and Matlab are available to the residents

Research Equipment

Medical Physics Residents are provided access to research equipment located within the Radiation Oncology Department and the Center for Radiological Research (CRR) located at the Columbia University Medical Center. This includes, but is not limited to:

  • Cherenkov imaging equipment including PIMAX 4 camera system, operating software, and all associated image processing and analysis software located within the Radiation Oncology Department
  • Optical computed tomography scanning systems, and all associated data processing and analysis software located within the Radiation Oncology Department and the CRR
  • Small Animal Research Radiation Platform (SARRP, Xstrahl) located in the CRR
  • Other laboratory equipment as needed

Resources from Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Medical Physics Residents hold appointments as Associate Research Scientist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, which grants them access to the resources available at Columbia University including:

  • Library access to Columbia University Library System, one of the largest academic library systems in North America with over 13 million volumes and over 160,000 journals and series
  • Software and computational resources
  • A wide variety of support systems for research including research coordinators, biostatisticians, editorial services and internal/external seeds funding opportunities