Portrait of Shirin A. Enger

Shirin A. Enger

Affiliate Member
Tenured Associate Professor, McGill University, Department of Oncology
Research Topics
AI in Health
Brachytherapy
Deep Learning
Medical Machine Learning
Multimodal Learning
Website
LinkedIn

Biography

Shirin Abbasinejad Enger is a tenured associate professor in the Medical Physics Unit of the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology, McGill University.

She is also Director of the Medical Physics Unit, and a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Medical Physics.

Enger is also a principal investigator at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and the Segal Cancer Centre of the Jewish General Hospital.

She received her PhD from Uppsala University in 2009 and was a postdoctoral fellow at Université Laval from 2009 to 2011. She has taken on a variety of leadership roles in international and national working groups and committees.

Current Students

Joel Beaudry
PhD - McGill University
Juan Duran
PhD - McGill University
Harry Glickman
PhD - McGill University
Hossein Jafarzadeh
PhD - McGill University
Maryam Maryam
PhD - McGill University
Website
Alana Thibodeau-Antonacci
PhD - McGill University
Yujing Zou
PhD - McGill University
Website
Github
Google Scholar

Publications

Investigating Alpha-DaRT Source Daughter Diffusion in Intra-Rectal Animal Models
Mélodie Cyr
Behnaz Behmand
Naim Chabaytah
Joud Babik
Mirta Dumancic
Joanna Li
Guillaume St-Jean
Shirin A. Enger
2024-10-24
Brachytherapy (published)
doi.org
Penalty weight tuning in high dose rate brachytherapy using multi-objective Bayesian optimization
Hossein Jafarzadeh
Majd Antaki
Ximeng Mao
Marie Duclos
Farhard Maleki
Shirin A Enger
Objective. Treatment plan optimization in high dose rate brachytherapy often requires manual fine-tuning of penalty weights for each objecti… (see more)ve, which can be time-consuming and dependent on the planner's experience. To automate this process, this study used a multi-criteria approach called multi-objective Bayesian optimization with q-noisy expected hypervolume improvement as its acquisition function (MOBO-qNEHVI). Approach. The treatment plans of 13 prostate cancer patients were retrospectively imported to a research treatment planning system, RapidBrachyMTPS, where fast mixed integer optimization (FMIO) performs dwell time optimization given a set of penalty weights to deliver 15 Gy to the target volume. MOBO-qNEHVI was used to find patient-specific Pareto optimal penalty weight vectors that yield clinically acceptable dose volume histogram metrics. The relationship between the number of MOBO-qNEHVI iterations and the number of clinically acceptable plans per patient (acceptance rate) was investigated. The performance time was obtained for various parameter configurations. Main results. MOBO-qNEHVI found clinically acceptable treatment plans for all patients. With increasing the number of MOBO-qNEHVI iterations, the acceptance rate grew logarithmically while the performance time grew exponentially. Fixing the penalty weight of the tumour volume to maximum value, adding the target dose as a parameter, initiating MOBO-qNEHVI with 25 parallel sampling of FMIO, and running 6 MOBO-qNEHVI iterations found solutions that delivered 15 Gy to the hottest 95% of the clinical target volume while respecting the dose constraints to the organs at risk. The average acceptance rate for each patient was 89.74% ± 8.11%, and performance time was 66.6 ± 12.6 s. The initiation took 22.47 ± 7.57 s, and each iteration took 7.35 ± 2.45 s to find one Pareto solution.Significance. MOBO-qNEHVI combined with FMIO can automatically explore the trade-offs between treatment plan objectives in a patient specific manner within a minute. This approach can reduce the dependency of plan quality on planner’s experience and reduce dose to the organs at risk.
2024-04-25
Physics in Medicine and Biology (published)
doi.org
Dosimetry of [18F]TRACK, the first PET tracer for imaging of TrkB/C receptors in humans
Alexander Thiel
Alexey Kostikov
Hailey Ahn
Youstina Daoud
Jean-Paul Soucy
Stephan Blinder
Carolin Jaworski
Carmen Wängler
Björn Wängler
Freimut Juengling
Shirin A. Enger
Ralf Schirrmacher
Background Reduced expression or impaired signalling of tropomyosin receptor kinases (Trk receptors) are found in a vast spectrum of CNS dis… (see more)orders. [^18F]TRACK is the first PET radioligand for TrkB/C with proven in vivo brain penetration and on-target specific signal. Here we report dosimetry data for [^18F]TRACK in healthy humans. 6 healthy participants (age 22–61 y, 3 female) were scanned on a General Electric Discovery PET/CT 690 scanner. [^18F]TRACK was synthesized with high molar activities (A_m = 250 ± 75 GBq/µmol), and a dynamic series of 12 whole-body scans were acquired after injection of 129 to 147 MBq of the tracer. Images were reconstructed with standard corrections using the manufacturer’s OSEM algorithm. Tracer concentration time-activity curves (TACs) were obtained using CT-derived volumes-of-interest. Organ-specific doses and the total effective dose were estimated using the Committee on Medical Internal Radiation Dose equation for adults and tabulated Source tissue values (S values). Results Average organ absorbed dose was highest for liver and gall bladder with 6.1E−2 (± 1.06E−2) mGy/MBq and 4.6 (± 1.18E−2) mGy/MBq, respectively. Total detriment weighted effective dose E_DW was 1.63E−2 ± 1.68E−3 mSv/MBq. Organ-specific TACs indicated predominantly hepatic tracer elimination. Conclusion Total and organ-specific effective doses for [^18F]TRACK are low and the dosimetry profile is similar to other ^18F-labelled radio tracers currently used in clinical settings.
2023-10-22
EJNMMI Radiopharmacy and Chemistry (published)
doi.org