Jonathan Kalinowski

M.Sc. Student
Medical Physics
Novel Brachytherapy Technology

Bio

Originally from Massachusetts, USA, Jonathan came to Montréal to study Physics at McGill University in 2017. He began working with the Enger Lab in January 2020, and graduated with a B.Sc. in Physics in August 2020. After a year of full-time research with the lab, Jonathan returned to McGill for his M.Sc. in Medical Physics. His research is focused on the development of Monte Carlo simulation software to facilitate dosimetry calculations for various radiotherapy modalities. When not in class or at the lab, Jonathan enjoys hiking, bike riding, cooking vegan food, and learning the drums.

Current Projects

Monte Carlo-based Dosimetry for GRID Radiotherapy
Spatially-fractionated radiotherapy, also known as GRID, involves the placement of a perforated metallic block in the beam of a conventional linear accelerator, resulting in a treatment field consisting of many spatially-separated ‘pencil’ beams. GRID is used for single-fraction dose escalation for large tumours, offering better control and reduced side-effects versus equivalent doses in the open-field case. Jonathan will use Geant4-based Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the dose distributions delivered in patients treated with GRID and evaluate the accuracy of the current ‘pencil and paper’ dosimetry protocol used for this technique.
RapidBrachyTG43: A Geant4-based TG-43 Parameter Calculation Engine for Brachytherapy Applications
The AAPM Task Group 43 report (‘TG-43’) establishes the dosimetry formalism currently employed in for clinical brachytherapy treatment. In this protocol, the patient is approximated as a homogenous water phantom, and dose rate is calculated as a product of several source-specific parameters, dubbed TG-43 parameters. Jonathan has developed a Geant4-based software package to enable calculations of TG-43 parameter datasets for any brachytherapy source model and isotope. This software can facilitate the benchmarking for other brachytherapy dose calculations or measurements for existing sources, and is useful generating new datasets for novel source models and isotopes.

2022

Kalinowski, Jonathan

McGill Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Internal Studentship award

2022.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX

Rahbaran, Maryam; Kalinowski, Jonathan; Tsui, James Man Git; DeCunha, Joseph; Enger, Shirin A.

Monte-Carlo Based Simulations of the Uncertainties in Clinical Water-Based Intravascular Brachytherapy Dosimetry Presentation

11.04.2022.

Abstract | BibTeX

2021

Kalinowski, Jonathan

Merit-based recruitment award for first year MSc students. award

2021.

BibTeX

Morcos, Marc; Antaki, Majd; Thibodeau-Antonacci, Alana; Kalinowski, Jonathan; Glickman, Harry; Enger, Shirin A.

RapidBrachyMCTPS: An open-source dose calculation and optimization tool for brachytherapy research Presentation

COMP, 01.06.2021.

BibTeX