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:

  • 3 Elekta Axesse/Infinity stereotactic linear accelerators with 4, 6, and 10/15 MV x rays, 5 megavoltage electron energies, 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 Selectron High Dose Rate Remote Afterloader 
  • Ring CT for mobile brachytherapy imaging
  • 1 GE Healthcare widebore (90 cm) CT simulator with flat, indexed, carbon-fiber, bariatric table and 4D CT 
  • 1 GE Healthcare Discovery ST-8 PET-CT simulator with large FOV fan, 4D CT, flat, indexed, carbon-fiber table, and 2D/3D/4D PET acquisition 
  • 1 Siemens Vida 3T MR simulator with robust pulse sequences for stereotactic radiosurgery, neuro-oncology and body oncology imaging, synthetic MR pulse sequences, and array of head and body coils
  • 5 GE Advantage workstations with virtual simulation tools and multi-modality image registration 
  • Distributed MIMS image processing workstations with MatLab and JavaScript interface 
  • 5+ RayStation, 5+ Pinnacle, 2 Eclipse, and 1 Monaco (Monte Carlo) 3D/IMRT radiation treatment planning systems
  • 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:

  • One image-guided, small animal x-ray irradiator, the Precision X-Ray SmART+ unit (Small Animal Radiation Treatment unit) 
  • One high dose rate, small animal x-ray irradiator, the Precision X-Ray XRAD 320 
  • One image-guided, clinical grade (human size) linear accelerator, the Varian TrueBeam™ linac with with IGRT, IMRT, RapidArc capabilities 
  • One future clinical grade (human size) 3T MR imaging unit, the Siemens Skyra 
  • One future clinical grade (human size) PET/CT imaging unit, the GE Discovery MI, including Comecer shielded glovebox for PET radioligand manufacturing 
  • Three unique Strontium-90 beta irradiation devices 
  • Additional resources include: one Clinical Physics Lab (240 sq ft) with biosafety hood; Physics Computing Lab (240 sq ft) with computing systems; MatLab, MIM and other research software; Medical Physics computing cluster; WFU DEAC Cluster 50-node parallel computing cluster; and office space for 9+ graduate and postdoctoral trainees.
  • Students can be a part of research at the Cancer Center, the NRC, Biotech Place, and the Clarkson Campus.

*This list is subject to change. We are scheduled to receive a new linear accelerator in the upcoming calendar year.