Clinical Facilities

The primary facility is the University of Cincinnati Medical Center (UCMC) on the College of Medicine/UC Health Campus in Cincinnati.  UCMC is tertiary care teaching hospital providing a full array of medical and educational services.  The Department of Radiation Oncology includes 14 physicians, 8 residents, 5 clinical physicists, 2 academic physicists, 3 dosimetrists and several therapists.  There are currently two Truebeams and one Trilogy with image guidance, one Philips wide-bore CT, Raystation treatment planning, Variseed and eye-plaque LDR, Flexitron HDR, and superficial capabilities.  Typically, 50-75 patients are treated here daily.  A full diagnostic radiology department provides services here as well.

West Chester Hospital, on the University Pointe Campus 22 miles north of UCMC, is a UC Health facility.  The University Pointe Campus was developed in the early 2000s to provide healthcare services to the rapidly growing population north of Cincinnati.  It includes a full array of hospital services, including radiation oncology.  West Chester Hospital Radiotherapy has two Truebeams, one Philips Widebore CT, and Eclipse treatment planning.  It is staffed by the same UC radiation oncologists, and 2 additional physicists, 2 dosimetrists, and therapists.  Typically, 25-50 patients are treated daily at this facility.  A full diagnostic radiology department provides services here as well.

The Cincinnati Children’s / UC Health Proton Therapy Center, 1 mile further north from University Pointe, is on the Liberty Township Campus of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.  This is a pencil-beam only proton therapy system treating in one pediatric gantry and one adult gantry, with one Toshiba CT.  There is an additional gantry providing capacity for research.  It is staffed by the same UC radiation oncologists, 4 additional physicists, 3 dosimetrists and therapists.  The facility treats approximately 25-35 patients daily.  Full diagnostic radiology equipment is available at the center.

The three sites contain a full complement of QA equipment, including water tanks, ion chambers, diodes, ion chamber and diode arrays, scintillation chambers, film, OSLDs, anthropomorphic and motion phantoms, proton-specific instruments, and other related equipment.

Research Facilities

Research facilities are housed on the College of Medicine campus, primarily in the Vontz Center for Molecular Studies (Radiation Oncology Research Facilities).  The UC College of Medicine houses several research core facilities designated as core service centers. These facilities exist within multiple departments but are collectively supported by the College of Medicine (https://med.uc.edu/research/core).

There are four bays of wet-lab space including a full array of refrigerators, freezers, incubators, microscopes, cabinet irradiators, and other support equipment specifically assigned to radiation oncology researchers, including two MD/PhDs, two PhDs, post-docs, graduate, and undergraduate students.  The Preclinical Core includes a micro-PET/CT and an animal and cell irradiator for whole-body, flank, and orthotopic irradiations supported by medical physicists.  Other core facilities in the College of Medicine and School of Engineering are available to researchers. 

Two of the medical physics faculty (Drs. Ionascu and Lamba) direct a lab employing an interferometric Quantitative Phase Imaging (QPI) technique known as spatial light interference microscopy (SLIM) to investigate thin, transparent samples such as cell cultures or genetically manipulated bacterial colonies.  The lab uses fluorescence-correlated SLIM imaging to observe cellular dynamics under real-time irradiation produced by a microscope-mounted mini x-ray source. (RadioOptics/Ionascu Lab)

Ionascu Laboratory

In addition, there are research support at the proton facility including a wet-lab, animal housing facilities, a dedicated research gantry, and normal dose-rate and FLASH irradiation capability for cell, animal, and human irradiation.