As a Wake Forest student in our Medical Physics graduate program, you likely expect to find the most current technology and instrumentation available. You will find advanced clinical equipment available throughout your training; it is well maintained with staff and faculty expertise available to ensure that you graduate with deep understanding of its use. As the majority of our equipment is dedicated to patient care, active supervision by program faculty should be an expectation.

Clinical Equipment 

Wake Forest University School of Medicine’s Department of Radiation Oncology, hosted by the NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, includes 55,000 sq ft of clinical space housing the following radiation and imaging devices:

  • 1 Varian EX linear accelerator with photon and electron beams, fine leaf MLC, electronic portal imaging and intensity modulated radiation treatment (IMRT) 
  • 3 Elekta Axesse stereotactic linear accelerators with photon and electron beams, fine leaf MLC, electronic portal imaging, IMRT and kV CBCT for image-guided radiation treatment (IGRT) and stereotactic body radiation treatment (SBRT) 
  • 1 Elekta ICON Model Gamma Knife™ 
  • 1 Elekta Flexitron High Dose Rate Remote Afterloader 
  • Elekta Integrated Brachytherapy Unit (L-arm isocentric X-ray digital imaging) 
  • 1 GE Healthcare widebore (90 cm) CT simulator, bariatric table and 4D CT 
  • 1 GE Healthcare Discovery ST-8 PET-CT simulator, 4D CT, 2D/3D/4D PET acquisition 
  • 1 GE Healthcare Signa TwinSpeed 3.0T MR simulator  
  • 5 GE Advantage workstations with virtual simulation tools and multi-modality image registration 
  • Distributed MIMS image processing workstations with MatLab and JavaScript interface 
  • RayStation, Pinnacle, Eclipse, and Monaco (Monte Carlo) 3D/IMRT/VMAT radiation treatment planning systems 
  • Variseed LDR brachytherapy radiation treatment planning system 
  • Plaque Simulator eye brachytherapy treatment planning system 
  • Oncentra HDR brachytherapy radiation treatment planning system 
  • Other technology-specific computing systems 
  • Robust quantities of NIST-traceable instrumentation for radiation measurements.  

All clinical irradiation and imaging devices are available for human research (IRB-approved research protocols) and small and large animal procedures (IACUC-approved research protocols). 

Research Equipment 

Dedicated research resources include:

  • A Precision X-Ray XRAD 320 Orthovoltage X-Ray Unit, in vitro and animal irradiations, adjustable and custom-made collimators and irradiation jigs, shielded irradiator room, and animal gas anesthesia systems 
  • Cs-137 Research Irradiator 
  • Unique Strontium-90 beta irradiation device and support instrumentation for radiation skin injury studies 
  • Clinical Physics Lab with chemical hood 
  • Physics Computing Lab with UNIX and PC computing systems 
  • MatLab, MIMS and other research software 
  • GEANT4, EGSnrc, GATE and TOPAS Monte Carlo based radiation transport simulation software 
  • WFU DEAC Cluster 50-node parallel computing cluster