Victor Daniel Diaz Martinez
Ph.D. Student
Department of Physics
Detector Development
+52 1 55 4881 5253
Bio
Victor was born in Mexico City in 1995. At a young age he was accepted at UNAM (Autonomous National University of Mexico) attending secondary school, high school and college. In college, he was accepted in a new Mexican major known as Biomedical Physics. He was the first generation of students, and obtained his B.Sc. degree in June 2018. Immediately after, Victor was hired by the UNAM, and worked as a teacher for fist-year Biomedical Physics undergraduate students for three years. He also had the opportunity to work as a teacher in the SMRI (Mexican Society of Radiology and Imaging) for Radiation Technologists during 2019-2020.
During college, Victor showed great interest in subjects related to Radiation Physics, Diagnostic Radiology, and Radiotherapy, this interest encouraged him, not only to share his knowledge with new students, but also to pursue graduate studies abroad. McGill University was an excellent option for him. Victor is now in his second year of the M.Sc. program in Medical Physics at McGill University, and joined the Enger Lab in early 2021. In this lab, Victor has been working on a detector development project for a new brachytherapy seed.
Current Projects
DaRT Detector Development for Quality Assurance
Diffusing alpha-emitter radiotherapy (DaRT) is a novel brachytherapy technique that uses 224Ra as source of radiation. This source is characterized by its radioactive decay in which alpha, beta and gamma radiation are emitted inside the tumor. However, the diffusion length of the alpha particle emitting radioactive daughter radionuclides varies for different tumor types as well as between patients. Another uncertainty related to these sources, is the activity per seed. This activity may vary between the implanted seeds as well as the number of seeds placed inside each applicator by the vendor that needs to be verified before implantation. Moreover, DaRT seeds also emit high energy gamma photons that may deposit dose to surrounding healthy tissues or health care personnel/friends and family of the patient. This is why it is important to have proper quality assurance tools to accurately characterize the radiation emitted from these DaRT seeds.
Victor is working on the design and simulation of a detector for DaRT. After this step he will proceed with the construction of the detector in the lab.
This interdisciplinary project gives Victor the opportunity to combine his knowledge acquired during his undergraduate and graduate studies regarding radiation detectors, radiation physics, and radiation safety.
2022
Monte Carlo Simulation of the 224Ra Decay Chain and the Diffusion of 220Rn for Diffusing Alpha-Emitters Radiotherapy Proceedings Article
In: MEDICAL PHYSICS, pp. E828–E828, WILEY 111 RIVER ST, HOBOKEN 07030-5774, NJ USA 2022.
Use of the Monte Carlo Method to Relate GAFCHROMIC (R) EBT3 Film Response to Absorbed Dose for Alpha Particle Dosimetry Proceedings Article
In: MEDICAL PHYSICS, pp. 5653–5653, WILEY 111 RIVER ST, HOBOKEN 07030-5774, NJ USA 2022.