"This is a well-structured book! Nothing else to expect from an excellent author on the subject of programming. Pavel Dvorak Ph.D.is a Czech medical physicist who had worked at various places in Austria and the United Kingdom and who summarizes in this book his enormous amount of knowledge to work with MatLab scripts related to clinical radiotherapy physics that he collected for more than 10 years. The additional web-based resources to the book add up to >900MB as ZIP-file including DICOM sample data files.
In the book are MatLab scripts presented in great detail, that are useful for medical physicists in radiotherapy with ambitions to dig into and/or handle the data themselves for research or quality assurance purpose (clinical use is declined for liability reasons) as well as for students with interests in getting to know clinical radiotherapy physics from the computational side of it.
The book starts with lists of "acronyms and abbreviations" and "definition of terms" that each are briefly explained, so a newcomer to this field is not lost by the use of special acronyms or terms later in the text. The subsequent text is divided into 10 chapters, starting with a chapter on the basics of MatLabEach chapter starts with a list of the intended learning outcomes that will be covered in the following. The literature referenced (not much, but better than nothing!) is also listed at the end of each chapter. This way the chapters could be possibly used as stand-alone modules, e.g.as an instructional text for an inverted-classroom teaching concept of a course.This is a well-structured compendium of in great detail explained useful scripts to be used in the commercial MatLab scripting environment."
Prof. Dr. Markus Buchgeister, Beuth Hochschule fur Technik Berlin, in The European Federation of Organizations for Medical Physics Bulletin (Spring 2019)
"This book provides a "dummy" for beginners guide to using MATLAB to solve common problems in DICOM and imaging post-processing. It also provides guidance on how to manage the preliminary problems of dose calculation and the extrapolation of data from instruments and devices available in modern radiation therapyThe book is intended as an introductory guide to managing simple problems and code in MATLAB which will be useful in radiation therapy environments. The added value in the book comes from having so many recent references and publications in the field, which will contribute to the training and learning of students and stimulate them to try to improve the state of the art of technology, solving everyday problems even in the absence of software and dedicated technologies, but by developing, if anything, that which is not available in their own radiotherapy department...The book is organized into ten chapters, as the author guides the readers through the problems in DICOM and the typical domain of the TPS, LINAC and images systems available in modern radiation therapy; he tries to provide the reader with the initial tools to understand which parameters, script, or complex codes should be written and how to integrate industrial data with simple interfaces developed in MATLABA much needed addition to current literature in the field, this book is tailored to the needs of medical physicists who are problem-solving using scripts and codes in MATLAB. Dr. Dvorak has provided scripts as dummy codes and summarized a sample of problems typically present in radiotherapy related to the use of advanced systems for treatment plansThe book can be used to support MSc programs in medical physics or early-career professionals from different disciplines (physics, engineering, software and medical instruments design, etc.) who need to understand the approach of using MATLAB codes for problem solving in radiation therapy."
Gabriele Guidi, Ph.D., M.Sc, Director of Medical Physics, Az. Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Modena, Italy in The Medical Physics International Journal (MPI), 2018, Vol.6, No. 2
"This introductory programming book demonstrates a series of accessible programming solutions for automating common tasks of the clinical therapy medical physicist. Prior familiarity with brute force solutions to analysis and Quality Assurance allows the reader to appreciate the algorithmic approach of this text. The approach of focusing on the problem/task and algorithmic solution makes the book readable. The readers introduction to coding is supplemented with online examples and the MATLAB online help.. The purpose of this book is to show how many common clinical physics tasks can be tackled through using the MATLAB code. Often, medical physicists have a unique set of circumstances, equipment, or software requiring unique solutions. Rather than applying brute force techniques, this book helps lead the reader to eloquent algorithmic solutions that are easily customizable.
This book is written for clinical radiotherapy physicists, educators, students, and medical physics residentsThe targeted audience for this book is the population having a general knowledge of radiation therapy tasks, with access to MATLAB, and having time to learn how to program in MATLABThe accompanying online resources are a series of short MATLAB scripts that are well-commented. These scripts give the reader the correct syntax of the MATLAB code that can be run "as is" or alteredThis book is well written with thoughtful practical examples of how to use the MATLAB code to solve many clinical problems that need to be customized. If you have the MATLAB software, I recommend this book."
Kenneth Bernstein in Med. Phys. 47 (3), March 2020
