Titus Kyenzeh (left) is a student in the Department of Radiation Oncology’s medical dosimetry certification program, which just earned accreditation thanks to a yearlong effort by Clinical Director Diana Baacke (center), Education Director Alonso Gutierrez, Ph.D., (right) and the program's director, Niko Papanikolaou, Ph.D., (not pictured).
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The UT Health Science Center San Antonio’s one-year training certificate in medical dosimetry, offered through the School of Medicine’s Department of Radiation Oncology, has became only the eighth program in the country to receive accreditation from the Joint Review Committee on Education in Radiologic Technology, the field’s major accrediting body.

Only one of two accredited dosimetry programs in Texas
“Accreditation makes us more competitive in recruiting high-caliber students,” noted the program’s Education Director, Alonso Gutierrez, Ph.D., assistant professor of radiation oncology. “Good students refer other good students to us.” He added that the only other accredited program in Texas is at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Dosimetrists help generate patient treatment plans for radiation therapy
Medical dosimetry is the science of measuring and calculating the doses and format of radiation given to patients requiring radiation therapy, often for cancer. Dosimetrists generate patients’ radiation treatment plans, in collaboration with medical physicists and radiation oncologists.

Dosimetry is a quickly developing field that requires extensive knowledge of new technologies, such as computed tomography (CT) scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET) scans and ultrasound. "As imaging modalities change, our strategy for treatment planning has to evolve,” said Diana Baacke, clinical director and manager.

"The increasing complexity of treatment planning and radiation delivery requires a special skill set from the medical dosimetrist that only academic programs with the depth and breadth of resources, such as those offered at CTRC, can offer," said Niko Papanikolaou, Ph.D., director of the medical dosimetry training program. "This accreditation is a testimony to our commitment in training skilled individuals, and ultimately will improve the quality of care we provide to cancer patients," added the professor and chief of the Division of Medical Physics in the Department of Radiation Oncology.

Requirements to enter the program
The one-year program accepts applicants who have earned either a bachelor’s degree or an associate’s degree in radiation therapy or a bachelor’s degree in a physical science. All applicants must have taken college algebra, college physics, human gross anatomy and/or physiology and medical terminology. Radiation oncology faculty members teach all of the courses at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the UT Health Science Center, except for one class in radiation therapy physics in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. The curriculum requires 400 hours of formal classroom teaching and 1,300 hours of clinical training.

Highly competitive field
Routinely, 70 applications arrive for only four or five slots each year in this extremely competitive field. This year the program accepted its largest class to date — six students from Texas and other states who entered the program in August. One of them, Titus Kyenzeh, is a native of Kenya who arrived in the U.S. four years ago and heard about the dosimetry program from a friend. After working 17 years in the computer industry, he is now pursuing his dream of working in medicine.

In this 3-D image of a patient’s skull, lines of different colors represent radiation beams calculated to strike the eye tumor, which is not visible.

Saving lives with math and science
“Medical dosimetry enables me to take the math and computer skills I already have and use them to get where I want to go,” Kyenzeh said. “Someday I would like to be part of a strong cancer research team.”

Kyenzeh said that to excel in this little-known field it helps to have an analytical mind, the ability to see things in three dimensions (and even four dimensions), computer proficiency, an affinity for mathematics and physics, and good interpersonal skills.

“I was excited to discover that I get to deal with patients over a long time,” he noted. “Typically, a person receives daily doses of radiation over a period of up to six weeks and, therefore, you see the patients every day. You become like a family. It’s very gratifying to be part of team that is saving a life or prolonging the life of someone with cancer.”

Successful accreditation team
Baacke estimates that the dosimetry program has awarded certificates to about 35 students since it opened in 1991. The curriculum became more formal in 2000. In 2006, Dr. Papanikolaou became the program director upon his arrival from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, which has an accredited dosimetry program. Dr. Papanikolaou worked with Dr. Gutierrez and Baacke to achieve the program’s accreditation in September.

For more information
Visit the Radiation Oncology Web site to learn more about the dosimetry certification program.