Portrait of Shirin A. Enger

Shirin A. Enger

Associate Academic Member
Tenured Associate Professor, McGill University, Department of Oncology
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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

Publications

A graphical user interface for calculating the arterial input function during dynamic positron emission tomography
Y. Daoud
Liam Carroll
Shirin A. Enger
Purpose. Dynamic positron emission tomography (dPET) requires the acquisition of the arterial input function (AIF), conventionally obtained … (see more)via invasive arterial blood sampling. To obtain the AIF non-invasively, our group developed and combined two novel solutions consisting of (1) a detector, placed on a patient’s wrist during the PET scans to measure the radiation leaving the wrist and (2) a Geant4-based Monte Carlo simulation software. The simulations require patient-specific wrist geometry. The aim of this study was to develop a graphical user interface (GUI) allowing the user to import 2D ultrasound scans of a patient’s wrist, and measure the wrist features needed to calculate the AIF. Methods. The GUI elements were implemented using Qt5 and VTK-8.2.0. The user imports a patient’s wrist ultrasound scans, measures the radial artery and veins’ surface and depth to model a wrist phantom, then specifies the radioactive source used during the dPET scan. The phantom, the source, and the number of decay events are imported into the Geant4-based Monte Carlo software to run a simulation. In this study, 100 million decays of 18F and 68Ga were simulated in a wrist phantom designed based on an ultrasound scan. The detector’s efficiency was calculated and the results were analyzed using a clinical data processing algorithm developed in a previous study. Results. The detector’s total efficiency decreased by 3.5% for 18F and by 51.7% for 68Ga when using a phantom based on ultrasound scans compared to a generic wrist phantom. Similarly, the data processing algorithm’s accuracy decreased when using the patient-specific phantom, giving errors greater than 1.0% for both radioisotopes. Conclusions. This toolkit enables the user to run Geant4-based Monte Carlo simulations for dPET detector development applications using a patient-specific wrist phantom. Leading to a more precise simulation of the developed detector during dPET and the calculation of a personalized AIF.
2023-05-30
Physics in Medicine & Biology (published)
doi.org
A MC-based anthropomorphic test case for commissioning model-based dose calculation in interstitial breast 192-Ir HDR brachytherapy.
Vasiliki Peppa
Rowan M. Thomson
Shirin A. Enger
Gabriel P. Fonseca
Choonik Lee
Joseph N. E. Lucero
Firas Mourtada
Frank‐André Siebert
Javier Vijande
Panagiotis Papagiannis
PURPOSE To provide the first clinical test case for commissioning of 192 Ir brachytherapy model-based dose calculation algorithms (MBDCAs) a… (see more)ccording to the AAPM TG-186 report workflow. ACQUISITION AND VALIDATION METHODS A computational patient phantom model was generated from a clinical multi-catheter 192 Ir HDR breast brachytherapy case. Regions of interest (ROIs) were contoured and digitized on the patient CT images and the model was written to a series of DICOM CT images using MATLAB. The model was imported into two commercial treatment planning systems (TPSs) currently incorporating an MBDCA. Identical treatment plans were prepared using a generic 192 Ir HDR source and the TG-43-based algorithm of each TPS. This was followed by dose to medium in medium calculations using the MBDCA option of each TPS. Monte Carlo (MC) simulation was performed in the model using three different codes and information parsed from the treatment plan exported in DICOM radiation therapy (RT) format. Results were found to agree within statistical uncertainty and the dataset with the lowest uncertainty was assigned as the reference MC dose distribution. DATA FORMAT AND USAGE NOTES The dataset is available online at http://irochouston.mdanderson.org/rpc/BrachySeeds/BrachySeeds/index.html,https://doi.org/10.52519/00005. Files include the treatment plan for each TPS in DICOM RT format, reference MC dose data in RT Dose format, as well as a guide for database users and all files necessary to repeat the MC simulations. POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS The dataset facilitates the commissioning of brachytherapy MBDCAs using TPS embedded tools and establishes a methodology for the development of future clinical test cases. It is also useful to non-MBDCA adopters for intercomparing MBDCAs and exploring their benefits and limitations, as well as to brachytherapy researchers in need of a dosimetric and/or a DICOM RT information parsing benchmark. Limitations include specificity in terms of radionuclide, source model, clinical scenario, and MBDCA version used for its preparation.
2023-05-17
Medical Physics (published)
doi.org
OC-0290 Investigation of the feasibility of selenium-75 as a viable brachytherapy source
J. Reid
Jonathan Kalinowski
J. Munro
A. Armstrong
Shirin A. Enger
2023-05-01
Radiotherapy and Oncology (published)
doi.org
PD-0334 Techniques to optimize auto-segmentation of small OARs in pediatric patients undergoing CSI
J. Tsui
M. Popovic
O. Ates
C. Hua
J. Schneider
S. Skamene
C. Freeman
Shirin A. Enger
2023-05-01
Radiotherapy and Oncology (published)
doi.org
PD-0505 Monte Carlo simulated correction factors of a novel phantom for brachytherapy dosimetry audits
K. Chelminski
R. Abdulrahim
A. Dimitriadis
E. Granizo-Roman
Jonathan Kalinowski
Shirin A. Enger
G. Azangwe
J. Swamidas
2023-05-01
Radiotherapy and Oncology (published)
doi.org
PD-0586 Design and assembly of a non-invasive radiation detector to measure the AIF in dynamic PET.
Liam Carroll
Y. Daoud
Shirin A. Enger
2023-05-01
Radiotherapy and Oncology (published)
doi.org
PO-1632 deep learning-based automatic segmentation of rectal tumors in endoscopy images
A. Thibodeau-Antonacci
L. Weishaupt
Aurelie Garant
C. Miller
T. Vuong
P. Nicolaï
Shirin A. Enger
2023-05-01
Radiotherapy and Oncology (published)
doi.org
PO-2166 Commissioning of new rectal applicator using electronic brachytherapy source
Nada Tomic
L. Liang
A. Esmaelbeigi
Jonathan Kalinowski
Shirin A. Enger
T. Vuong
S. Devic
2023-05-01
Radiotherapy and Oncology (published)
doi.org
PO-2225 Characterization of the RBE of various photon radiation qualities on human cancer cell lines
N. Chabaytah
J. Babik
J. Li
B. Behmand
T. Connell
M. Evans
R. Ruo
H. Bekerat
Shirin A. Enger
T. Vuong
2023-05-01
Radiotherapy and Oncology (published)
doi.org
Fast D
<sub>M,M</sub> calculation in LDR brachytherapy using deep learning methods
Francisco Berumen
Shirin A. Enger
Luc Beaulieu
2023-04-14
Physics in Medicine and Biology (published)
doi.org
Applying the column generation method to the intensity modulated high dose rate brachytherapy inverse planning problem
Majd Antaki
Marc-André Renaud
Marc Morcos
Jan Seuntjens
Shirin A. Enger
2023-03-13
Physics in Medicine & Biology (published)
doi.org
Effects of incoming particle energy and cluster size on the G-value of hydrated electrons.
Alaina Bui
H. Bekerat
Lilian Childress
Jack C Sankey
Jan Seuntjens
Shirin A. Enger
2023-02-16
Physica medica (Testo stampato) (published)
doi.org