Ana received a Master degree in Biomedical Engineering and Biophysics (2013) from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, followed by a PhD in Medical Physics (2016) at the University College London, UK. During her studies she carried out projects on image guidance and adaptive radiotherapy, developed techniques to improve the accuracy of dose measurements and designed, developed and characterised new water-equivalent plastic materials for clinical light-ion beams. Ana joined the Medical Radiation Science group at NPL in 2016.
Ana is leading research to improve the dosimetry of proton therapy beams, including the development of tissue-equivalent materials, determination of kQ factors using calorimetric measurements and development of dosimetric audits. Ana is supervising a number of PhD and MSc students and she holds an Honorary Research position at the University College London, Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering Department. She is also a member of an IPEM working group to provide a proton dosimetry code of practice in the UK and has contributed to more than 20 peer-reviewed publications. Ana has been actively involved in the organisation of the PPRIG Proton Therapy Physics workshop at NPL and she has also been involved in a number of scientific outreach activities.
Areas of interest
The focus of Ana’s research is the development of measurement and modelling techniques for new and emerging radiotherapy techniques such as proton and carbon-ion therapies. This includes the development and implementation of a new Code of Practice for reference dosimetry of proton and ion beams which will utilise the NPL proton calorimeter, commissioning and calibration of proton and carbon-ion facilities, calculation of ionization chamber perturbation factors using Monte Carlo methods, development of tissue-equivalent phantom materials specifically for proton and carbon-ion therapy beams and development of proton dosimetry audits.
Email Ana Lourenço