Kwok Lam

Kwok Lam, PhD

Professor (retired)
Co-Founder & Advisor/3D Prototype & Fabrication Service

Biography

Dr. Lam's research has been involved with improving patient/tumor imaging and also treatment delivery. Image intensifier/television and screen-film systems used in radiology at the time he began his research had limited dynamic range. As a result, image details in some part of the images were more difficult to appreciate. Dr. Lam was the principal investigator in studies on the development of special hardware to reduce the dynamic range of the image so that the image can better match the capability of the imaging device. The same principle can be applied to modern detectors.
 
Patient setup variations from session to session during multi-fraction radiotherapy is a significant factor in the requirement of expansion of treatment volume from the clinical target volume to a larger planning target volume.  Dr. Lam was the principal investigator in studies on improving the automatic determination of patient setup errors with markers and using statistical methods in the correction of setup errors based on imaging.  A simplified version of the statistical methods helped guide the establishment of setup error correction protocols for patient treatments.
 
The understanding of the dependence of the dose delivered to the patient on the collimator setting of x-ray treatment machines is essential in the calculation of how long the treatment machine needs to be turned on for the delivering of the treatment.  Dr. Lam led studies in the improvement of the modeling of the treatment machine and methods to measure the contributing factors.  Parts of these were used in published practice guidelines.

Areas of Interest

  • Development of devices for stereotactic radiosurgery treatment and quality assurance
  • Development of devices for quality assurance of biological irradiators.

Clinical Interests

  • Stereotactic radiosurgery

Credentials

  • PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, 1986
  • Board Certification: Therapeutic Radiologic Physics

Published Articles or Reviews

Selected from 16 publications

  • Lam KL, Chan H-P.  Effects of x-ray beam equalization on mammographic imaging. Med Phys, 17:242-249,1990. 
  • Lam KL, Ten Haken RK. Improvement of precision in spatial localization of radio-opaque markers using the two-film technique, Med Phys, 18: 1126-1131,1991.
  • Lam KL, Balter JM, Ten Haken RK.  Effect of daily localization and correction on the setup uncertainty: dependence on the measurement uncertainty, re-positioning uncertainty and action level.  Phys Med Biol,52:6575-6587, 2007
  • Lam KL, Ten Haken RK.  In phantom determination of collimator scatter factorsMed Phys, 23:1207-1212, 1996.
  • Lam KL, Muthuswamy MS, Ten Haken RK.  Measurement of backscatter to the monitor chamber of medical accelerators using target charge.  Med Phys, 25:334-338, 1998.