TU-E-BRB-06: Meet the Expert - Medical Imaging Physics: Career Opportunities and Considerations

Abstract

Medical imaging is big business — a multibillion dollar business, both for the manufacturers of medical imaging equipment and for health care providors. It plays an important role in diagnosis and in therapy. For these and other reasons medical imaging physics offers a number of highly satisfying career paths — clinical support in small to moderate sized medical centers, consulting clinical support, academic radiology positions, and positions in industry. For the past 30+ years, the career path an individual takes depends primarily on individual interest and capabilities and to a lesser extent on job availability. This session focuses on the responsibilities of the medical imagingphysicist in these different career paths. Presented are examples of different career paths. Discussed are the responsibilities that medical physicists typically have, minimum educational and experience requirements, and desirable skills and credentials. This Meet the Expert Session will be moderated by Gary T. Barnes, Ph.D. Dr. Barnes has worked for more than thirty‐five years in medical imaging. His experience encompasses routine clinical support, radiology resident teaching, mentoring of young medical physicists, research, and prototype medical imaging equipment development. He is a Fellow of the AAPM, ACR and AIMBE, and is currently Professor Emeritus, Department of Radiology, UAB Medical Center, President of RAD Physics, Inc., a medical physics consulting company he founded in 1978, and President of X‐Ray Imaging Innovations, a technology development company he founded in 1998. For the fifteen years prior to his retirement from UAB and becoming Professor Emeritus, he was the Director of the Physics and Engineering Division of the Department of Radiology. The Division included medical physics faculty, medical imaging equipment service engineers, QC technologists and technicians, computer programmers, and other informatics specialists. At the time of his retirement the Division had twenty‐five members. Dr. Barnes is the author or coauthor of 100+ peer reviewed papers and has several issued U.S. patents.