Abstract

What is radiotherapy and how do we harness the proton to help battle cancer? I’ll try and shed some light on exactly what we do in a radiotherapy department, how proton therapy converts a particle accelerator into a tool to fight cancer, and what a physicist does day to day in a hospital. I’ll try and give a quick virtual tour of the deepest proton therapy centre in the world, at University College Hospital (UCLH); cover some of the new and upcoming clinical trials and development we are involved in, and maybe show how it’s not that far removed from your own work here at Cambridge.

Andrew Gosling is a senior clinical physicist at the University College London Hospitals (UCLH) Proton Therapy Centre (one of two NHS proton therapy centres in the UK). I joined UCLH in the early stages of the project and has been involved in the preparation, development, commissioning, and now clinical roll out of the proton therapy project at UCLH .

His primary work areas are the proton system dosimetry and commissioning of the treatment planning system, alongside the development of an independent Monte Carlo dose verification system. He has helped develop many of the treatment techniques within UCLH , am involved in various clinical trials, joint first author of the CTRad UK consensus guidelines for reporting proton and photon plans for clinical trials, and is actively developing Python and ESAPI scripts for data analysis and plan assessment.

I previously completed a PhD in Astrophysics at Oxford and worked as a post-doctoral researcher in Oulu (Finland) and Oxford as well as a telescope support astronomer.