WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:10.560 --> 00:00:18.160
Hello, I am Beatriz Sánchez. I am a physicist&nbsp;
with a PhD in Medical Physics and talking to you&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:00:18.160 --> 00:00:24.080
from Chile. I'm currently working as an&nbsp;
associate professor at the Institute of Physics&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:00:25.040 --> 00:00:29.840
at the Pontificial Catholic University Chile.

00:00:34.080 --> 00:00:42.080
Today, I have to talk about what is my daily work&nbsp;
as a medical physics in my case in the university.&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:00:42.640 --> 00:00:50.720
Well, as I held an academic position, I do a lot&nbsp;
of lecturing to pre and postgraduate students.&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:00:50.720 --> 00:00:58.240
I also have to supervise their research when they&nbsp;
are doing their thesis in our medical physics&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:06.400
master program. I also do my own research with&nbsp;
other colleagues from the institute or colleagues&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:01:06.400 --> 00:01:15.280
from abroad, but also how to spend some time&nbsp;
writing projects to finance our research. But&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:01:15.280 --> 00:01:22.880
also I have to do outreach giving lectures to&nbsp;
students at schools for example and also sometimes&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:01:22.880 --> 00:01:30.640
I have to record videos to talk about what is&nbsp;
my daily life as a medical physicist. Well,&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:01:30.640 --> 00:01:38.960
in particular my research consists of modeling&nbsp;
the doses that a patient under radiotherapy&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:48.240
treatment receives outside the treatment field.&nbsp;
These doses are relatively low but they can lead&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:58.720
to second cancer several years later. We are doing&nbsp;
modeling but also we need to test if those models&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:01:58.720 --> 00:02:07.120
are working correctly and for that we should&nbsp;
test those models against experimental data.&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:02:08.320 --> 00:02:15.840
How can I measure the dose received by patients&nbsp;
under radiotherapy treatment? Well, I can use&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:24.400
very tiny detectors like small crystals of the&nbsp;
order of a millimeter that I can put inside a&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:31.200
different geometries, simulated a human being.&nbsp;
Sometimes these geometries are very, very simple&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:02:31.200 --> 00:02:42.640
like a cube, filled of water, but sometimes we&nbsp;
are as lucky as having something like Chris.

00:02:43.360 --> 00:02:50.080
Chris is a antropomorphical phantom and&nbsp;
inside him we can find all the complexity&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:57.840
of the structures and geometries that we can find&nbsp;
in a real human being. So we can place inside him&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:02:57.840 --> 00:03:04.160
these small tiny detectors to measure&nbsp;
the dose outside the treatment fields.&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:14.320
I can show you for example how Chris looks&nbsp;
inside. I've taken part of the head of Chris&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:24.320
and inside, I can see the structure simulating&nbsp;
the bones and even the brain. Those numbers&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:03:25.200 --> 00:03:33.360
means or can be used as a reference for&nbsp;
the dosimeters I will plain inside Chris.

00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:48.720
Now, I want to tell you about what are the things&nbsp;
that I do like most in my job. And probably,&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:03:48.720 --> 00:03:57.120
the most important one is thinking that&nbsp;
what I do can have an impact on a cancer&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:03:57.120 --> 00:04:05.760
patient's care but I also really enjoy it when&nbsp;
I see my students enchanted with what they are&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:04:05.760 --> 00:04:12.240
learning or investigating, or when I think on&nbsp;
their progression since they enter in our master&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:04:12.240 --> 00:04:20.400
program and now they are working as professionals&nbsp;
in radiotherapy centers or doing their PhD studies&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:04:20.400 --> 00:04:28.160
or working at the industry. I also enjoy when I&nbsp;
finish my research and I have to write a paper to&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:35.680
communicate to the Medical Physics community&nbsp;
our results. But all in all, I cannot think&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:04:35.680 --> 00:04:42.560
on a single day in which I get bored what I am&nbsp;
doing in my daily life as a medical physicist.

00:04:48.640 --> 00:04:59.440
One of them is to manage to deliver a good lecture&nbsp;
and when you get that, you really feels it. That's&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:04:59.440 --> 00:05:09.840
really important. But also, another challenge&nbsp;
is to be able to recover from the frustration&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:05:10.960 --> 00:05:20.320
that it happens when you see that your research is&nbsp;
moving slowly than you really thought or planned&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:05:20.320 --> 00:05:30.400
at the beginning. Also, it is difficult when after&nbsp;
a lot of work, you get a result which is different&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:05:30.400 --> 00:05:41.760
from what your intuition as a physicist you get.&nbsp;
Well, I hope you have enjoyed this small video&nbsp;&nbsp;

00:05:41.760 --> 00:05:51.840
recording to celebrate the Virtual International&nbsp;
Day of Medical Physics. Bye from Chile!