Appointments:
Assistant Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology, Dalhousie University; Assistant Professor, Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University; Assistant Professor, Department of Radiology, Dalhousie University; Medical Physicist, Nova Scotia Health Authority
Affiliations:
Dalhousie University
Nova Scotia Health Authority
Research Interests:
Stereotactic radiotherapy, 4pi, medical physics, trajectory optimization, fMRI
My research involves optimizing radiotherapy planning and delivery to maximize organ-at-risk (OAR) sparing with the goal of improving the quality of life of cancer patients. Currently, this involves determining automated ways to choose radiation beam placements to avoid entrance dose to the OARs. These methods are commonly called 4pi techniques in the literature as they search the 4pi sphere of space around the patient to determine the optimal beam placements. My team have developed a number of algorithms to aid in this, and this work has been licensed by Brainlab, a radiotherapy and surgical device company, and is now in radiotherapy clinics worldwide.
What brought you to your current institution? After doing my graduate and post-graduate studies in Ontario and working in the US, I decided it was time to move back to Nova Scotia to be close to my parents. I was offered a position at the Nova Scotia Health Authority and with the increased focus on research in the Medical Physics department presenting a unique opportunity, I accepted the offer.
Hometown: Bridgetown, NS
Learn More about my research: https://medicine.dal.ca/departments/department-sites/radiation-oncology/our-people/our-faculty/chris-thomas.html
Involvement with BHCRI to date:
Dr. Christopher Thomas is an Associate Member