Job Description

The Medical Dosimetrist is responsible for generating accurate and optimized radiation treatment plans that support the safe and effective delivery of radiation therapy. Working collaboratively with radiation oncologists, medical physicists, and radiation therapists, the dosimetrist translates prescribed treatment parameters into precise technical plans. This role ensures compliance with clinical protocols, quality standards, and regulatory requirements while prioritizing patient safety and treatment accuracy. The Medical Dosimetrist plays a critical role in achieving optimal clinical outcomes through advanced planning techniques and continuous quality improvement.

Responsibilities

Treatment Planning:
• Creates three-dimensional treatment plans for patients in Radiation Oncology.
• Develops beam angles, beam doses, beam trajectories and collimator movements to create personalized treatment plans based on the physician prescription.
• Reduce risk of radiation induced side-effects to patients' normal tissues by reducing exposure to these organs while maintaining minimum doses to the intended treatment volume.
• Create and evaluate treatment plans based on national and local trials when patients are enrolled.

Image Import and Registration:
• Reviews and exports non-planning images used by physicians to identify target volumes from the hospital's PACS system.
• Import those images into the department Treatment Planning System (TPS).
• Register these images to the planning image set using rigid and deformable registration techniques.
• Utilize their expertise to align images closely based on the intended treatment site using rigid registrations andcomplete deformable registration and review it to ensure that deformations are adequately small. These registrations will be used to transfer volumes identified on non-planning images to planning images for treatment planning.

Simulation/Treatment Consultation:
• Advises the simulation therapy staff on difficult and unusual cases.
• Assesses treatment planning images to ensure quality as well as feasibility of treatment.
• Review breathhold and 4DCT images in cases where patients have difficulty breathing or irregular breathing. They will also be consulted for patient setup in the case of non-standard setup or patient limitations.

Patient management in Radiation Oncology Information System (OIS):
• Transfer patient data from the department TPS to the OIS. and ensure that the data being sent matches the TPS treatment plan. This validation is necessary to ensure the patient is being treated as intended.
• Enter treatment setup notes, create digital radiographs and import and validate documents necessary for treatment.

Patient dose summation:
• In cases where patients have been treated previously, dosimetrists create a dose summation to evaluate potential harm to the patient due to re-irradiation of the same tissues. In some instances, this will require cooperation with outside facilities to collect dosimetric data outlining that facilities treatment. Utilizing the previously made registrations, the dosimetrist will deform doses to our current treatment planning dataset.
• Create an equivalent dose in 2 Gy fractions (EQD2) to evaluate cumulative doses to highly sensitive organs such as the spinal cord or brainstem. They iteratively use this data to adjust the treatment plan and reduce potential risk to these organs.

Total Body Irradiations (TBI):
• Imports images and calculates transmission blocking for TBI.
• Once verified in conjunction with the physics staff, dosimetry will manually build a brass dose compensator. This compensator will be placed in the beam during treatment to ensure that the patient is getting a uniform dose in a treatment where the total body is getting near lethal doses of radiation.

Other Duties as Assigned

Qualifications

• Minimum Required: Bachelor's Degree - Medical Dosimetry.
• Preferred: Master's Degree - Medical Dosimetry.
• Preferred: Medical Dosimetrist Certification Board (MDCB).
• Minimum Required:
• Recently certified, licensed or graduates within past 12 months. Preferred: 1 - 2 Years equivalent experience.