Senior Series: The Senior Project – An HRA senior explores Proton Therapy data

It was the time spent in her Mother’s office at the Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute (HUPTI) that inspired Abby Hellman’s Senior Project. As her love of medical physics grew, associating her Senior Project with HUPTI only seemed fitting.

After brainstorming with her Mother and her Mother’s colleagues at HUPTI, they identified a need for a more effective method to analyze the morning Quality Assurance (QA) data. Abby worked with Dr. Dasuni Adikaram, learned everything she could about QA data and proton therapy and got started analyzing the past five years of data for one of HUPTI’s gantry rooms.

QA data is data that is collected every morning and functions in a similar manner to calibration data. It confirms that the beam is delivering the correct dosage to the correct spot every single day, insuring the patient’s safety.

Abby’s Senior Project included graphs showing the behavioral trends of the dose and range, a research paper/lab report analyzing the data, explaining proton therapy and its benefits over other types of radiation therapy, and lastly a presentation at Senior Project Night that discussed the benefits of proton therapy and the purpose of QA data.

While this project was complicated and time consuming, it was extremely beneficial and helpful to Abby to learn more about medical physics/proton therapy and perform actual data analysis.