Leith Rankine

Dr. Leith Rankine is a board-certified medical physicist and an Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He joined Columbia University in September 2026 after more than a decade at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he served as a clinical medical physicist, educator, researcher, and clinical leader. His clinical expertise includes image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT), stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), respiratory motion management, and surface-guided radiation therapy (SGRT). He currently provides clinical services at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, NY.

Dr. Rankine earned his PhD and MS in Medical Physics from Duke University, an MS in Physics from Northeastern University, and a BS (Hons) in Physics from Curtin University in Australia. He completed his CAMPEP-accredited medical physics residency in radiation therapy at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. During his residency, he contributed to the clinical implementation of a novel single-room proton therapy system and real-time, real-anatomy tracking and gated radiation delivery on the first clinical MRI-guided radiation therapy system. After completing his residency, Dr. Rankine joined the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he served as a clinical medical physicist and faculty member for more than a decade. During his time at UNC, he held clinical leadership roles in IGRT, respiratory motion management, SGRT, linac-based SBRT, and linear accelerator quality assurance (QA). In addition, Dr Rankine worked with physician faculty to clinically implement specialized treatment techniques, such as GRID therapy, stereotactic arrhythmia radioablation (STAR), and bolus electron conformal therapy (BECT). He was also actively involved in medical physics education and residency training, serving as Associate Director of the CAMPEP-accredited medical physics residency program and the primary mentor for several clinical rotations.

Dr. Rankine's research interests include functional imaging for personalized radiation therapy and GRID therapy for extremity sarcoma. In particular, his research has investigated the use of hyperpolarized xenon-129 magnetic resonance imaging to characterize regional lung function, guide functional avoidance treatment planning, and better understand radiation-induced lung injury in patients receiving thoracic radiation therapy. He is also an active volunteer with the American Board of Radiology, serving on the Therapeutic Medical Physics Qualifying Committee.