Australasian recommendations for quality assurance in kilovoltage radiation therapy from the Kilovoltage Dosimetry Working Group of the Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine.

The Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine (ACPSEM) Radiation Oncology Specialty Group (ROSG) formed a series of working groups to develop recommendations for guidance of radiation oncology medical physics practice within the Australasian setting. These recommendations provide a standard for safe work practices and quality control. It is the responsibility of the medical physicist to ensure that locally available equipment and procedures are sufficiently sensitive to establish compliance.

A study on the suitability of the PTW microDiamond detector for kilovoltage x-ray beam dosimetry.

Kilovoltage x-ray beams are widely used in treating skin cancers and in biological irradiators. In this work, we have evaluated four dosimeters (ionization chambers and solid state detectors) in their suitability for relative dosimetry of kilovoltage x-ray beams in the energy range of 50 - 280kVp. The solid state detectors, which have not been investigated with low energy x-rays, were the PTW 60019 microDiamond synthetic diamond detector and the PTW 60012 diode.

Assessment of voluntary deep inspiration breath-hold with CINE imaging for breast radiotherapy.

Deep Inspiration Breath-Hold (DIBH) techniques for breast cancer radiation therapy (RT) have reduced cardiac dose compared to Free Breathing (FB). Recently, a voluntary deep inspiration breath-hold (vDIBH) technique was established using in-room lasers and skin tattoos to monitor breath-hold. An in-house quality assessment of positional reproducibility during RT delivery with vDIBH in patients with left-sided breast cancer was evaluated.

Practical time considerations for optically stimulated luminescent dosimetry (OSLD) in total body irradiation.

Total body irradiation (TBI) treatments are used to treat the whole body in preparation for hematopoietic stem cell (or bone marrow) transplantation. Our standard clinical regimen is a 12 Gy in 6 fraction, bi-daily technique using 6 MV X-rays at an extended Source-to-Surface distance (SSD) of 300 cm. Utilizing these characteristics, the beam dose rate is reduced below 7 cGy/min as is standard for TBI treatment.

Using LASSO Regression to Predict Rheumatoid Arthritis Treatment Efficacy.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) accounts for one-fifth of the deaths due to arthritis, the leading cause of disability in the United States. Finding effective treatments for managing arthritis symptoms are a major challenge, since the mechanisms of autoimmune disorders are not fully understood and disease presentation differs for each patient. The American College of Rheumatology clinical guidelines for treatment consider the severity of the disease when deciding treatment, but do not include any prediction of drug efficacy.

In vivo dosimetric impact of breast tissue expanders on post-mastectomy radiotherapy.

Introduction: Temporary tissue expanders with metallic ports for gradual saline injection are increasingly employed to facilitate breast reconstruction after post-mastectomy radiotherapy (PMRT). Treatment beams therefore pass through a high-density rare-earth magnet. Measurements ex vivo suggest attenuation of dose to the skin and chest wall at clinical risk of relapse.

Mining Electronic Health Records using Linked Data.

Meaningful Use guidelines have pushed the United States Healthcare System to adopt electronic health record systems (EHRs) at an unprecedented rate. Hospitals and medical centers are providing access to clinical data via clinical data warehouses such as i2b2, or Stanford's STRIDE database. In order to realize the potential of using these data for translational research, clinical data warehouses must be interoperable with standardized health terminologies, biomedical ontologies, and growing networks of Linked Open Data such as Bio2RDF.

A time-indexed reference standard of adverse drug reactions.

Undetected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) pose a major burden on the health system. Data mining methodologies designed to identify signals of novel ADRs are of deep importance for drug safety surveillance. The development and evaluation of these methodologies requires proper reference benchmarks.

Analyzing search behavior of healthcare professionals for drug safety surveillance.

Post-market drug safety surveillance is hugely important and is a significant challenge despite the existence of adverse event (AE) reporting systems. Here we describe a preliminary analysis of search logs from healthcare professionals as a source for detecting adverse drug events. We annotate search log query terms with biomedical terminologies for drugs and events, and then perform a statistical analysis to identify associations among drugs and events within search sessions.

Text mining for adverse drug events: the promise, challenges, and state of the art.

Text mining is the computational process of extracting meaningful information from large amounts of unstructured text. It is emerging as a tool to leverage underutilized data sources that can improve pharmacovigilance, including the objective of adverse drug event (ADE) detection and assessment. This article provides an overview of recent advances in pharmacovigilance driven by the application of text mining, and discusses several data sources-such as biomedical literature, clinical narratives, product labeling, social media, and Web search logs-that are amenable to text mining for pharmacovigilance.

Near-catheter dosimetry of a HDR brachytherapy source using Gafchromic film.

High dose rate intraluminal brachytherapy treatments can be delivered using as few as one or two afterloading catheters, delivering doses of up to 10 Gy at 10 mm, leading to high dose gradients and extreme hot spots close to the catheter. These conditions have the potential to damage the patient's health tissues, possibly leading to necrosis, or even death from uncontrolled bleeding. Ionisation chambers and solid state detectors are limited in their usefulness for near-catheter dosimetry because of their physical size and in some cases energy and dose rate dependence.

Methyl 3-[3',4'-(methylenedioxy)phenyl]-2-methyl glycidate: an ecstasy precursor seized in Sydney, Australia.

Five 44 gallon drums labeled as glycidyl methacrylate were seized by the Australian Customs Service and the Australian Federal Police at Port Botany, Sydney, Australia, in December 2004. Each drum contained a white, semisolid substance that was initially suspected to be 3,4-methylenedioxymethylamphetamine (MDMA). Gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC/MS) analysis demonstrated that the material was neither glycidyl methacrylate nor MDMA.