Deidre Batchelar

Adjunct Professor

Medical Physics, Physics

Other Titles: Senior Medical Physicist, BC Cancer Agency, Centre for the Southern Interior
Email: dbatchelar@bccancer.bc.ca

Research Summary

Advanced Imaging in Brachytherapy; high precision radiotherapy.

Research Interests & Projects

My overarching research interest is in application of advanced imaging techniques to brachytherapy. Using optimal imaging is the only way brachytherapy can achieve its promise of being highly localized and conformal. Improved imaging and image processing allows us to not only focus on accurate positioning of the treatment sources, but also to more closely examine what parameters affect damage to nearby organs at risk and to expand the range of normal organs we seek to protect. For instance, the advent of 3D imaging in cervix brachytherapy facilitated monitoring dose to the bladder, rectum, and sigmoid instead of just points representing the bladder and rectum but we still don’t understand what happens to these organs over a course of 5 brachytherapy insertions and much work is to be done to understand the dose constraints to sigmoid, small bowel, and the vagina.

I am also interested in process efficiency and the application of novel tools to clinical brachytherapy processes to reduce the time required to safely perform these procedures thereby improving both patient throughput and the patient’s experience during treatment.