A physicist? In medicine? What is that? Some people think I just solve physics equations for the doctors. Thankfully, it is far from that! A career in medical physics is suited for people with a physics or engineering background who desire to work in a clinical environment as a scientist rather than a medical practitioner. This unique mix of medicine, technology, science, and the different tasks involved are extremely exciting and motivate me to come to work every day.

​Dual Energy CT (DECT) is a useful modern technology that expands the clinical utility of CT exams. By transmitting two different x-ray energy spectras through the patient's body, due to differential x-ray photon attenuation by your body's tissues as a function of energy, we can separate materials that previously looked identical in traditional CT scanning due to having similar attenuation at one energy.

Today I volunteered to have my brain scanned in our newest clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner equipped with functional MRI (fMRI) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI)! These technologies are SO cool! I almost cried when the radiologist was teaching me this, absolutely amazed and in love with medicine and technology (all over again!)

My first time at the Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) was a great one! The vendor display area was by far my favorite. We were able to see several scanners (how do they transport these things?) and new technologies. It was also great to see multiple 2 and 3 story vendor displays with couches and meeting rooms on top of their displays. I won't lie and say I didn't have a ton of free cappuccinos as we cruised around the vendor area (for the love of physics!).