Research Fellow in Image Analysis for Upright Radiotherapy

We have an exciting opportunity for a Research Fellow to join the Radiotherapy Image Computing (RTIC) group at UCL as part of an academia-industry collaborative project with Leo Cancer Care. The RTIC group is a small team of collaborative and passionate researchers working on applying advanced image processing and analysis to Radiotherapy related applications. It is part of the Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering and the newly formed Hawkes Institute at UCL. The Hawkes Institute was formerly the Centre for Medical Image Computing (CMIC) and the Wellcome/EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences (WEISS) and brings together researchers from the departments of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and others across UCL, with an interest in applying cutting-edge computational and engineering solutions to healthcare related applications.

Leo Cancer Care is a young, innovative company who are developing equipment to treatment radiotherapy patients upright rather than lying down. Currently, the vast majority of radiotherapy patients are treated lying on their backs. For conventional X-ray radiotherapy, a complex ‘gantry’ weighing approximately 5 tonnes is rotated around them. As it rotates, the gantry delivers radiation beams from different angles. For proton therapy, gantries can be 3 stories high and weigh approximately 200 tonnes. In recent years, interest has grown in ‘upright’ or ‘gantry-less’ radiotherapy, where a patient is treated upright on a robotic chair, which rotates through a fixed treatment beam. Upright radiotherapy has the potential to: (1) deliver substantial cost savings by simplifying the equipment, room design and workflow (whether using X-ray, proton, carbon, or other treatment beams); (2) mak e treatments more comfortable for subsets of patients, physically and psychologically; (3) lower the late toxicity for subsets of patients due to the differing anatomy and physiology upright, compared to supine.

The Research Fellow position offers a unique opportunity to conduct innovative research leading to real world impact as part of an exciting collaboration between UCL and Leo Cancer Care. The research will focus on the computational analysis of medical images for upright, gantry-less radiotherapy, utilising imaging data acquired from both upright and supine body positions to answer at least one of the following two research questions:

• How does upright body positioning affect anatomy relative to supine body positioning? Close collaboration with clinical colleagues will enable us to explore the likely impact of these anatomical changes on radiotherapy treatments.
• How can medical imaging data acquired from supine body positioning be aligned and/or integrated with data acquired from upright body positioning?

This is a fixed-term role for 24 months. Please note that the earliest start date for the role is 1st May 2025. Salary is £46,796 (Grade 7, spine point 33) per annum, subject to experience.

Customer advert reference: B04-05926

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