Noted Medical Physicist To Document OSLD Superiority At 50th ASTRO Annual Meeting

Main Category: Radiology / Nuclear Medicine
Article Date: 23 Sep 2008 - 9:00 PDT

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Landauer, Inc. (NYSE: LDR), a recognized leader in personal and environmental radiation monitoring, announced that noted medical physicist, Paul A. Jursinic, Ph.D., will be presenting at ASTRO his findings on the superiority of Landauer's Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dosimetry (OSLD) for clinical dosimetric measurements. Dr. Jursinic is renowned among health physicists for his rigorous focus on QA, and he has investigated a wide range of technologies for efficiency and precision in comparing measured dose with calculated dose output.

"Dr. Jursinic was looking for a dosimetry tool to help improve the quality of care for the patients at his cancer center," explains Cliff Yahnke, Ph.D., Director of Technology at Landauer. The ASTRO presentation is based on Dr. Jursinic's independent research and 2007 article in the Journal of Medical Physics, "Characterization of optically stimulated luminescent dosimeters, OSLDs, for clinical dosimetric measurements," which concludes that OSLDs may be a superior substitute for TLDs and diodes for in vivo dosimetric measurements, particularly for surface dose measurements.

According to Dr. Jursinic, giving oncologists access to the pinpoint accuracy of OSLD readings for skin entrance dose leads to more effective treatment. And Jursinic is not only impressed with the accuracy of OSLD technology. "OSLDs are simple and inexpensive to use, by both physicists and technicians. They have no energy dependence, no angular dependence, no temperature dependence, and negligible fade-effectively eliminating the need for any kind of post-measurement corrections," he concludes.

Adds Yahnke, "When OSLD technology is used in combination with the Landauer microStar® solution, clinicians not only get the benefit of better outcomes, as predicted by Dr. Jursinic; they also avoid the tedium and operational inefficiencies associated with the TLD process and other competing technologies."

Dr. Jursinic is currently Director of Clinical Medical Physics at West Michigan Cancer Center, Kalamazoo, MI, served as Professor of Radiation Oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin from 2000 to 2006, and has written extensively on radiation physics over his 30+ year career as a health physicist.

About Landauer

Landauer is the leading provider of analytical services to determine occupational and environmental radiation exposure. For more than 50 years, the Company has provided complete radiation dosimetry services to hospitals, medical and dental offices, universities, national laboratories, and other industries in which radiation poses a potential threat to employees. Landauer's services include the manufacture of various types of radiation detection monitors, the distribution and collection of the monitors to and from clients, and the analysis and reporting of exposure findings.

Landauer, Inc.