Every year the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) through the Nuclear Medical and Imaging Sciences Technical Committee (NMISTC), one of the bodies responsible for medical imaging, awards several highly reputable prizes in the field of medical physics. In this edition, Fernando Hueso González, CDEIGENT researcher at the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC, CSIC-UV) has received the Bruce H Hasegawa Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award 2022.
Fernando Hueso’s work focuses mainly on improving the precision with which proton therapy cancer treatments are delivered. Thanks to the development of high-resolution radiation detectors, it is possible to verify in real time and with millimeter precision that the proton beam is aimed at the right place (the tumor), thus avoiding collateral damage to surrounding healthy tissues. Other lines of research are the optimization of dosimetry in brachytherapy and the prevention of collisions between the machine and the patient in radiotherapy.
The NMISTC Council is in charge of the management and promotion of activities useful to its members. One of its actions is to invite committee members to nominate people for the NMISTC Awards. In this case, Magdalena Rafecas López, former UV professor and IFIC researcher, and currently researcher at the Institute of Medical Engineering of The University of Lübeck and member of the IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences committee, presented the nomination of Fernando Hueso.
These awards are announced annually and candidates are judged on the basis of their contribution to medical imaging science, demonstrated by the technical merit and creativity of their research. Priority is given to nominees whose research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, especially if the nominee is the first author. The award consists of 1500 € and a plaque which was presented during the “2022 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium, Medical Imaging Conference”.
“It is an honor to receive this award as a young researcher for my career in medical imaging. It is a recognition of years of hard work, together with the privilege of working in leading hospitals such as OncoRay or Mass General Hospital, which have provided all the means at their disposal to develop this research. I would also like to thank Prof. Magdalena Rafecas for the nomination, as well as Dr. Guntram Pausch and Prof. Thomas Bortfeld for their letters of recommendation,” says Fernando.
Fernando Hueso González studied the Master in Advanced Physics at the Universitat de València in 2011-2012. The following four years he was at the proton therapy center of the Technische Universität Dresden (OncoRay), doing his PhD in real-time therapy monitoring from fast gamma rays. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoc at Massachusetts General Hospital to transform a gamma spectrometer from a ‘laboratory’ to a clinical prototype for first application with patients. He is currently continuing his research at IFIC (CSIC/UV) in the IRIS Medical Physics group, thanks to the GenT program (GVA).
Image credits: Ralf Engels