Daniel Lee McShan
Daniel Lee McShan | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Ann Arbor, MI, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | 3-D radiation treatment planning; UMPlan treatment planning system; octree-based dose calculation |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Medical physics, radiation oncology, computers |
| Institutions | University of Michigan |
Daniel Lee McShan is an American medical physicist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is known for his contributions to the development of three-dimensional (3-D) radiation therapy treatment planning and for pioneering computational methods that made 3-D dose calculation and display practical for clinical use.
Biography
McShan spent much of his career at the University of Michigan, where he worked in the Department of Radiation Oncology and, over several decades, helped build the department's in-house computerized treatment planning capabilities. He later became a Professor Emeritus of Radiation Oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School. His work combined physics, medicine, and computers, applying computer science techniques to problems in clinical radiation therapy.
Work
McShan was a principal contributor to UMPlan, the University of Michigan's in-house 3-D radiation treatment planning system, which he helped develop together with colleagues including Benedick A. Fraass and Randall K. Ten Haken beginning in the mid-1980s. UMPlan combined 3-D dose calculation with 3-D anatomical display and was among the early 3-D treatment planning systems presented at international conferences on the use of computers in radiation therapy.
A recurring theme of McShan's research was reducing the computational cost of 3-D dose calculation so that it could be performed at clinically useful speeds. He adapted the "octree," a hierarchical data structure used in computer graphics to represent 3-D objects, to the geometrical calculations required for photon-beam dose computation. By minimizing the number of distinct geometrical calculations needed to reach a given resolution, the octree-like approach reduced the most time-consuming part of the dose calculation and sped up photon dose computation substantially. This work was published in Medical Physics in 1993.
McShan also worked on integrating the "beam's-eye view" concept into clinical treatment planning, on 3-D conformal therapy, and later on optimization methods for intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and conformal field shaping. Over his career he authored or co-authored a large body of peer-reviewed publications on radiation therapy physics and treatment planning.