Sponsored by: Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute & Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists
and the Universities of Toronto and British Columbia
Background, Motivation, and Aims
As disciplines, medical physics, mathematics and statistics interface in many ways, but those interfaces only
rarely correspond to collaborations between researchers and practitioners in the respective disciplines. This
workshop aims to initiate activities along these interfaces and to help position Canada as a leader in medical
physics research and practice informed by the latest developments in the appropriate statistical methodology
and to identify research areas of relevance to applied mathematicians.
Medical physics involves the application of physics to problems in medicine and is an exceptionally broad
interest area. We here narrow the interest to areas of medical physics as applied to disease, primarily
(but not limited to) cancer. Within this realm, medical physics plays key roles in both the diagnosis and
treatment of disease. The applications of physics to the relevant problems in both diagnostic and therapeutic
arenas is complicated by the fact that the “model systems” are individual patients, each presenting a unique
“case” in their care. Thus, single, analytical solutions to problems in medical physics are often not possible,
and statistically-based approaches must be considered. Particularly relevant in next-generation practice of
medical physics is the advent of Data Analytics, Big Data, and the associated analytic algorithms still
under development by mathematicians and computer scientists. Presentations will be recorded by video, as appropriate.
This meeting is designed to bring together researchers in medical physics, mathematics and statistics, with the aim of establishing discipline-wide communications and scope for future collaborations. A substantial amount of time
will be set aside for planning of such collaborations; one possibility is a BIRS meeting in 2019 devoted to specific
areas identified at this 2017 CANSSI/COMP meeting; another specific objective is to identify specific target
areas for a CANSSI Collaborative Research Team proposal and/or a PIMS Collaborative Research Group proposal. Identification of funding partners will also play a role in these discussions.
