AAPM medical physics practice guideline 10.a.: Scope of practice for clinical medical physics.

The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) is a nonprofit professional society whose primary purposes are to advance the science, education, and professional practice of medical physics. The AAPM has more than 8000 members and is the principal organization of medical physicists in the United States. The AAPM will periodically define new practice guidelines for medical physics practice to help advance the science of medical physics and to improve the quality of service to patients throughout the United States. Existing medical physics practice guidelines will be reviewed for the purpose of revision or renewal, as appropriate, on their fifth anniversary or sooner. Each medical physics practice guideline (MPPG) represents a policy statement by the AAPM, has undergone a thorough consensus process in which it has been subjected to extensive review, and requires the approval of the Professional Council. The medical physics practice guidelines recognize that the safe and effective use of diagnostic and therapeutic radiation requires specific training, skills, and techniques as described in each document. As the review of the previous version of AAPM Professional Policy (PP)-17 (Scope of Practice) progressed, the writing group focused on one of the main goals: to have this document accepted by regulatory and accrediting bodies. After much discussion, it was decided that this goal would be better served through a MPPG. To further advance this goal, the text was updated to reflect the rationale and processes by which the activities in the scope of practice were identified and categorized. Lastly, the AAPM Professional Council believes that this document has benefitted from public comment which is part of the MPPG process but not the AAPM Professional Policy approval process. The following terms are used in the AAPM's MPPGs: Must and Must Not: Used to indicate that adherence to the recommendation is considered necessary to conform to this practice guideline. Should and Should Not: Used to indicate a prudent practice to which exceptions may occasionally be made in appropriate circumstances

Development and testing of a database of NIH research funding of AAPM members: A report from the AAPM Working Group for the Development of a Research Database (WGDRD).

PURPOSE: To produce and maintain a database of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) members, to perform a top-level analysis of these data, and to make these data (hereafter referred to as the AAPM research database) available for the use of the AAPM and its members. METHODS: NIH-funded research dating back to 1985 is available for public download through the NIH exporter website, and AAPM membership information dating back to 2002 was supplied by the AAPM. To link these two sources of data, a data mining algorithm was developed in Matlab. The false-positive rate was manually estimated based on a random sample of 100 records, and the false-negative rate was assessed by comparing against 99 member-supplied PI_ID numbers. The AAPM research database was queried to produce an analysis of trends and demographics in research funding dating from 2002 to 2015. RESULTS: A total of 566 PI_ID numbers were matched to AAPM members. False-positive and -negative rates were respectively 4% (95% CI: 1-10%, N = 100) and 10% (95% CI: 5-18%, N = 99). Based on analysis of the AAPM research database, in 2015 the NIH awarded $USD 110M to members of the AAPM. The four NIH institutes which historically awarded the most funding to AAPM members were the National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. In 2015, over 85$116M, which is lower than the historic mean of $120M (in 2015 USD). CONCLUSIONS: A database of NIH-funded research awarded to AAPM members has been developed and tested using a data mining approach, and a top-level analysis of funding trends has been performed. Current funding of AAPM members is lower than the historic mean. The database will be maintained by members of the Working group for the development of a research database (WGDRD) on an annual basis, and is available to the AAPM, its committees, working groups, and members for download through the AAPM electronic content website. A wide range of questions regarding financial and demographic funding trends can be addressed by these data. This report has been approved for publication by the AAPM Science Council

Quality assurance program for prototype stereotactic system developed for Neptun 10 PC linac

Background: A prototype stereotactic radiosurgery set was designed and constructed for a Neptun 10 PC linac that is currently being used at Imam Reza hospital in Mashhad. Materials and Methods: A complete qualit y assurance program was designed and performed for the constructed system including isocentric accuracy test, localization accuracy test, dose delivery accuracy test and leakage radiation test. Target simulator, control alignment device and plexiglass phantom which were parts of the developed hardware were used to fulfill quality assurance program. Results: The average isocentric shift resulted from the gantry rotation and couch turning were respectively obtained to be 1.4 and 2 mm. The average localization error in the three coordinates was found to be 2.2 mm. The total treatment uncertainty due to all of the probable errors in the system was equal to 4.32 mm. The dose delivery accuracy test was carried out, the result indicated a 3-7% difference between the given and measured dose. Conclusion: The quality assurance tests showed consistent performance of the constructed system within the accepted limits; however, some inconsistency might exist in certain cases. The safety of SRS method is increased when the overall uncertainty is minimized and the treatment of the lesions adjacent to critical organs is avoided

Effectiveness of Advanced and Authenticated Packet Marking Scheme for Trace back of Denial of Service Attacks

Advanced and Authenticated Packet Marking (AAPM) scheme is one of the proposed packet marking schemes for the traceback of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. AAPM uses hash functions to reduce the storage space requirement for encoding of router information in the IP header. In this paper we take the perspective of the attacker and analyze the effects of inserting fake edges against AAPM. Since the AAPM scheme is subject to spoofing of the marking field, by inserting fake edges (corrupting the marking field) in the packets the attacker can impede traceback. In this paper, we show that the attacker can increase this distance by inserting fake edges in packets. Therefore, the attacker can make it appear to the victim that the attack was launched from a node farther away than it actually was, thus maintaining his own anonymity