CPF/HEP/Medical Imaging Seminar with Gerard Estrada

Hadron radiotherapy using protons or heavy ions is consistently growing worldwide with approximate increases of available facilities of ~20-30% every 5 years. These therapeutic modalities have the potential to significantly reduce the toxicity and improve treatment effectiveness compared to conventional radiotherapy with photons and electrons for selected indications, such as pediatric tumors. However, these advantages come with an increased risk of misdelivery due to the very localized deposition of radiation dose within the patient. In this seminar I will focus on the evaluation of gamma detectors employing Cherenkov light for PRV applications. I will present various Cherenkov-based detector configurations optimized to exploit the different signatures of the Bragg peak in PRV including prompt-gamma timing based on proton and gamma time-of-flight information, a collimated prompt-gamma detection system, and a novel Cherenkov Charge Induction concept that combines Cherenkov and induced-chargesignals in semiconductor materials.

Bio:

Gerard Ariño Estrada completed his PhD in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, in high-Z semiconductor detectors for nuclear medicine applications. He spent a year as a postdoc in the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany, working on silicon detectors for free-electron lasers, before joining the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California Davis (UCD). While at Davis, he worked on a range of detector instrumentation for PET including semiconductor detectors, scintillator crystals, and Cherenkov emitters. He also contributed to nuclear medicine studies in plants and equine subjects using commercial PET systems. As a principal investigator, Gerard has secured NIH funding for the development of detector instrumentation both PET and PRV applications and currently he holds two faculty appointments at UCD and the Institute of High Energy Physics (IFAE) in Barcelona.