Bioinformatics and Outcomes Research in Radiation Oncology
Kandinsky
Joe Deasy's Web Page
Director, Division of Bioinformatics and Outcomes Research, Dept. of
Radiation Oncology, Washington University School of Medicine in St.
Louis
The overall goal of the Division of Bioinformatics and
Outcomes Research is to investigate, with our collaborators, the
relationships between disease, patient factors, treatment details, and
the resulting treatment outcomes. BIOR is comprised of faculty
members, programmers, data specialists, and administrative support
staff, as well as extramurally funded postdoctoral fellows and graduate
students. We emphasize
investigations into complication-free survival, and quality-of-life, in
addition to disease control. However, investigations vary from
the
basic molecular level (bioinformatics and DNA damage response
modeling), the search for biomarkers that can help predict outcome,
cellular/radiobiological factors in outcomes, and empirical dose-volume
models. Another description of our research interests in the area of
treatment planning can be found here. Our division provides support to the Dept. of Radiation Oncology, and outside collaborators, for the analysis, archiving, modeling, and ongoing quality
assurance of treatment outcomes. A strong area of emphasis is the development and
implementation of informatics systems that support all areas of our
mission. Our
core academic areas of interest are the computer sciences (algorithms, programming, and information systems),
mathematical and statistical modeling, bioinformatics, and radiobiology.
Open-source software systems we have developed for radiotherapy research:
- The Operations Research Applications in Radiotherapy
(ORART) Toolbox. This is an extension to CERR that generates IMRT
dosimetry ('beamlets') as a basis for IMRT optimization research.
PubMed publication list