Radiation therapy techniques have been used for more than a century to treat cancers. Physicists in the Radiation Detector and Imaging group and affiliated with the Biomedical Research & Innovation Center (BRIC) at the US Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have been pursuing improvements in radiation therapy technology for several years in collaboration with the University’s Proton Cancer Institute Hampton (HUPCI). Now, BRIC physicists are starting a study on how best to promote different types of radiation therapy.
BRIC scientists plan to evaluate the ability of accelerator-based proton therapy, such as that offered locally by HUPCI, to replace treatments that use radioactive sources, such as cobalt-60, to reduce potential radiological risks that could to be associated with such isotopes.
The study is led by Cameron Clarke, a Jefferson Lab scientist who developed the proposal in collaboration with colleagues Michael Dion and Eric Christy.
As an early career scientist who just joined the lab as a staff member working expressly to advance the BRIC initiative, I am very excited to receive this green light from the DOE. I am also excited about how the genesis of this project reflects the effectiveness of the collaborative laboratory approach that BRIC aims to facilitate, and I look forward to continuing to pursue these connections as I immerse myself in the study.”
Cameron Clarke, Jefferson Lab scientist
Scientists at BRIC work with private and public sector partners to help develop new devices and systems that apply the lab’s knowledge and decades of world-class expertise with particle accelerators and detectors.
Among Jefferson Lab’s BRIC-related innovations are advanced nuclear medicine imaging devices to better detect cancer. use of electron beam for water treatment. and developing radiation imaging probes for plant biology research to help find ways to optimize plant productivity, biofuel development and biomass carbon sequestration.
Pros and cons
The new study is funded by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Radiological Safety (ORS) and will run through fiscal year 2025. ORS focuses on global radiological safety and promotes alternative technologies to reduce the use of devices based on radioactive sources as a form of permanent risk reduction.
External beam radiation therapy is the use of external radiation to pass through the body and deposit energy in internal organs. It can be done using X-rays, gamma rays, or subatomic particles such as electrons, neutrons, or protons.
Proton therapy is the use of an external proton beam, such as the one at the DOE Office of Science user facility at Jefferson Lab, the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, used to study the building blocks of matter using an electron beam.
Each method has its pros and cons.
Proton therapy, for example, is difficult and expensive to implement, requiring a hospital or clinic to build a particle accelerator, radiation shielding, and large rotating hulls to allow for multiple treatment angles.
Radiation therapy using radioisotope sources, meanwhile, only needs a room-sized clinical device to house the hot source and shielding and purifiers to focus the beam used in treatment.
But the main advantages of proton therapy are the built-in safety features that prevent the radiation source from causing radiological hazards, which come from locating most of the energy deposition and being able to quickly turn the radiation source on and off. Spatial localization is particularly attractive for the treatment of tumors near sensitive tissues, such as prostate and brain cancers, as well as for pediatric care, and mechanical control of the radiation source is attractive for radiological safety issues.
Clarke and colleagues will investigate the current state-of-the-art technologies and practical barriers to replacing radioisotope-based radiotherapy in collaboration with HUPCI and other clinical sites. They will also procure a computerized treatment planning system with proton therapy capability and simulate the relative performance potential of cancer treatment for use in discussions with physicians and help bridge the gap between nuclear physics researchers and medical treatment practitioners.
“Tangible positive effects”
Originally interested in astronomy, Clarke became interested in nuclear physics while an undergraduate at Mississippi State University when his professors, working in Jefferson Lab’s Hall C on the Q-weak experiment and others, shared their research experience in a fundamental physics class.
He finally won when he joined the DOE Undergraduate Laboratory Internship Program at Jefferson Lab in 2014 and had a hands-on introduction to detectors, nuclear physics and imaging.
Clarke earned his bachelor’s degree in physics in 2015 and his PhD in experimental nuclear and particle physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island in 2021.
While at SUNY, he returned to Jefferson Lab to help run the PREX-II experiment in 2019 and the CREX experiment in 2020.
“During the pandemic, while working in isolation, I began to explore career trajectories that could build on my technical background while creating a more immediately tangible positive impact on the people around me,” Clarke said. “This led me to become interested in industrial research that applies detector physics to medical imaging.”
In 2021, he began a tenure as a detector scientist with Canon Medical Research USA, Inc., working on next-generation semiconductor detectors for photon-counting computed tomography scanners before returning to Jefferson Lab as a staff scientist.
“I am excited to work at Jefferson Lab because I come to work every day and learn something new about how the principles and technologies of nuclear physics can be applied to improve my life and the lives of everyone around me,” Clarke said.
“A key aspect of my journey as a scientist has been curiosity – asking questions to understand how the world and everything in it works and learning how to use the tools of science to find the answers in collaboration with world-renowned experts and colleagues.
“My journey from nuclear physics to industry medical imaging and now back to a sort of middle ground between the two has been the result of seeking out areas of research that balance my competing desires to ask fundamental questions and immediately make important technological advances that help people to their daily lives”.
