Prince Raj a UWA Medical Physics Graduate; From Stars to Cells

Today we are going to introduce Mr. Prince Raj Joseph Sivaraj one of the successful Medical Physics graduates of UWA.

Prince started Medical Physics in 2019 after studying Astrophysics for a year at UWA. He started working at Resonance Health as a technical analyst after graduation in 2020. Resonance Health is an Australian healthcare company specialising in the development and delivery of non-invasive medical imaging software and services. Princes’ knowledge in Medical Imaging especially MRI in addition to his programming skills helped him succeed in this position.

The title of Prince’s project was “The impact of high modulation on delivery accuracy for IMRT and VMAT radiotherapy treatments (Modulation Complexity Score)”, supervised by Dr. Pejman Rowshan Farzad, and Dr. Sivakumar Somangili.

Here are some comments from Prince’s principal supervisor and coordinator, Dr. Pejman Rowshan Farzad.

“I met Prince in 2019 when he was thinking of switching from Astrophysics to Medical Physics. I realized that he was interested in the field of medical physics and accepted his application. Prince impressed me with his ability in some of the challenging courses, in particular especially radiotherapy physics and medical imaging. He is very friendly and always happy to help and support others. He was a uni mentor at UWA and assisted newly enrolled student. It feels great to see that he was successful in his studies as well as in finding a relevant career in the field, despite the difficulties of being an international student.”

Prince kindly accepted to answer a few questions about his experience with the UWA Medical Physics Research Group.

Introduction and your current position and role:

Hello, I’m Prince Raj from India, joined the medical physics program in 2019. I completed my study in December, 2020 and started my first job as Technical Analyst at Resonance Health in May 2021. The job entails image analysis, reporting, customer service and phantom production. I analyse MRI images for Iron concentration, fat distribution and delineate organ volume in soft tissues using image visualization, processing software. I also assist in phantom production.

What did you enjoy most about UWA, and Medical Physics research group?

UWA is a beautiful university, not just in terms of infrastructure, technology and support but also with its diverse cultural community, friendly staff and services for students. The most memorable moments of my UWA experience is the friendships I gained through various activities and events.

I came to study Astrophysics at UWA in 2018. It was a wonderful year in my career, but the study wasn’t for me. So, I learned about Medical physics and loved every aspect of the program such as the syllabus, course structure and world class teachers who made the classes easy, enjoyable as well as updated to the current work qualifications. Especially, our program coordinator Pejman keeps the program interesting and challenging by updating the course modules to the current innovations. I was fortunate to join as one of his student with his master’s project which I completed successfully under his supervision. UWA Medical Physics research group is a vibrant, proactive community which includes student, researchers, educators and professionals. Weekly meetings, seminars, webinars, group volunteering activities and the yearly gathering at our Professor Martin’s house are some of the best memories of the group. Everyone in the team are motivating and challenging which makes the study/research interesting. It was a pleasure and privilege to study with such friendly students and staff who made my life easier at UWA.

Can you give us your top three reasons to study Medical Physics?

Current job market, extensive research opportunities and the ability to assist in the medical field to help people in real world using physics.

How do you feel you have made a difference in your field of research?

I’m glad and privileged to complete my master’s project, which I believe would’ve played a vital role in the current radiotherapy workflow, once implemented. Research is an integral part in this program and helped me grow my skills to be job ready.

What is your best advice to current students and Medical Physics applicants?

Medical Physics is a hard subject with wide range of skills, units to complete. However, it is very interesting and challenging which makes it worthwhile. It will be easier to complete, if the course structure is followed regularly and a bit of extra time spent with research group to extend our knowledge in the field. Our excellent and friendly teachers and researchers are there to help. Finally, as Pejman said “it’s all in our own hands”.

Here is the abstract of Prince’s thesis:

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The impact of the modulation on treatment delivery has been a long-lasting study for over a decade. The effect of high modulation over treatment plan complexity has been a curious topic especially for advanced treatment modalities such as IMRT and VMAT. There are various parameters constantly varying for both the treatments. The increasing modulation in the treatment delivery will result in a high complexity leading to dose delivery inaccuracy, which has been studied and suggested by previous studies. Employing a plan complexity metric will evaluate the plan deliverability with a numerical score for effective outcome. There is significant correlation observed between plan complexity metric and dose delivery verification analysis (Gamma index analysis) as concluded by various studies which could be verified by this study.

Materials and Methods: The modulation complexity metric has been introduced and described by studies which can be utilized as the pillar for creating a complexity metric evaluation script in MATLAB. The script created has been administered in retrospective plan analysis with their corresponding gamma pass-rate from gamma index analysis. 100 treatment plans from three specific sites were tabularized with their gamma pass rates and their respective modulation complexity metric calculated and were verified against each other for correlation. The correlation analysis were performed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) analysis and student T test hypothesis testing which were used to confirm their variability with a significance level of 0.05. Linear regression analysis was also performed for all plans for understanding the spread of the data.

Results: A modulation complexity metric evaluator script has been successfully established using the MATLAB program with a run time of 2 seconds for most of the plans. Prominent results in Pearson’s correlation analysis has been observed between modulation complexity metric and gamma pass-rates with few outliers and variations. The results verified using hypothesis testing with a significance level of 0.05, also have shown confirmatory outcome. The spread of the results analysed with linear regression has helped arrive at some explanation for the variability and range of the complexity metric calculated. The effectiveness and applicability of the complexity metric was also discussed for their clinical benefits and shortcomings.

Conclusion: Clinical utilization of complexity metric can benefit both treatment planning and QA process for all IMRT and VMAT treatments. It has the capacity to significantly reduce the workload and time for patient specific QA along with the potential for betterment of the QA workflow.