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Explore our cutting edge research, world-class patient care, career opportunities and more.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Home
- Fundraising
Chin-Cheng Chen, PhD, DABR
Optimizing and implementing state-of-the-art radiation therapy workflows and quality assurance measures to advance radiotherapy treatments for pediatric patients
Overview
Developing and implementing a targeted radiation treatment program, such as proton therapy, requires a robust approach. My research centers on treatment efficiency, plan robustness, quality assurance measures for our equipment and continual consideration and improvement of patient safety. By focusing on these efforts, my work ensures St. Jude continually offers state-of-the-art radiotherapy treatment for children with cancer.
Chen Research Summary
For treatment modalities to contribute positively to patient outcomes, it is vital for treatment centers to employ research to improve treatment accuracy and safety.
To aid in this effort, much of my research concentrates on the implementation of clinical physics workflows, quality assurance measures and adoption of cutting-edge treatment planning techniques. I evaluate our clinical physics workflows to ensure they are adequately standardized, automated and optimized, leading to consistency, efficiency, accuracy and safety in patient care and streamlined operations.
Tailored, patient-specific treatments are integral to an advanced therapeutic approach. Therefore, I work to integrate cutting-edge algorithms and software into routine radiation oncology practice. This enables us to generate advanced proton treatment plans with dose-averaged linear energy transfer (LETd) optimization. By applying such an advanced optimization algorithm, we can precisely calculate and adjust the distribution of energy deposition, ensuring that the proton track ends within the tumor while minimizing damage to organs-at-risk and surrounding healthy tissue.
As the Department of Radiation Oncology works to achieve these goals, my future-facing efforts aim to bring small-field proton therapy capabilities to St. Jude to aid in proton stereotactic radiosurgery. I will also play an active role in cooperative clinical trials and research projects that contribute significantly to the translation of scientific discoveries into clinical applications that benefit pediatric patients worldwide.
Selected Publications
About Chin-Cheng Chen
Dr. Chin-Cheng Chen is a pioneering proton physicist who earned his PhD in medical physics from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and began his specialization in proton therapy in 2012. Throughout his career, he’s commissioned two major proton centers in the United States, formulated proton planning guidelines and developed quality assurance policies and procedures. Dr. Chen is a member of the Treat Efficiency sub-committee of the Particle Therapy Co-operative group (PTCOG) and lectures on practical proton therapy as an Adjunct Associate Professor at National Tsing Hua University.
Contact us
Chin-Cheng Chen, PhD, DABR
Associate Member
Department of Radiation Oncology
MS 210, Room IP304
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Memphis, TN, 38105-3678 USA GET DIRECTIONS