Current Research

Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging

I am a Research Fellow with the Molecular Imaging Physics & Instrumentation (MIPI) lab, part of the Center for Advanced Radiological Sciences (CAMIS) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS).

I am contributing to the development of a novel approach for adaptive Positron Emission Tomography (PET) monitoring of Proton Beam Therapy using endogenously generated positrons. It is important but difficult to verify the delivery of dose for proton therapy, and PET is currently the best option for monitoring dose delivery in-vivo. As they pass through matter, therapeutic protons create positron-emitting radionuclides that can be imaged with a PET camera. The radionuclides arise through different physics mechanisms than the dose and are thus not directly relatable. We are investigating methods for relating the PET images to planned dose and assessing the accuracy of the treatment.

Lab Website: My profile and My Research

IOP physics world did a short video about the PET monitoring of proton therapy project (and I'm in about 2 seconds of it).

The powerpoint slideshow below gives a quick overview of this project

(download)

Animation showing proton irradiation and subsequent PET activity

PTpet — The proton beam penetrates the head to a fixed depth, depositing dose and killing tumor tissue. At the same time, the protons create radioactive isotopes of common elements that can be imaged with a PET camera.

Selected Publications

Min CH, Zhu X, Winey BA, Grogg K, Testa M, El Fakhri G, Bortfeld TR, Paganetti H, Shih HA. "Clinical Application of In-Room Positron Emission Tomography for In Vivo Treatment Monitoring in Proton Radiation Therapy." Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. vol. 86, pp. 183–189, 2013.
K. Grogg, X. Zhu, C.H. Min, B. Winey, T. Bortfeld, H. Paganetti, H.A. Shih, and G. El Fakhri. "Feasibility of using distal endpoints for In-room PET Range Verification of Proton Therapy." IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci, vol. 60, no. 5, pp. 3290-3297, 2013.

Conference Proceedings

K. Grogg, X. Zhu, C.H. Min, B. Winey, T. Bortfeld, H. Paganetti and G. El Fakhri. "Feasibility of using distal endpoints for In-room PET Range Verification of Proton Therapy." IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, Anaheim, California, October 2012.
Poster for IEEE-MIC 2013, Seoul, Korea, October 2013, entitled "Feasibility of using ¹⁸O-enriched phantoms for PET range verification of proton therapy treatment planning."

Past Research

Experimental High Energy Physics

I did my graduate research with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) group at the University of Wisconsin physics department.

I measured the cross section of the W boson produced in association with jets using 32 pb^-1 of data, and compared it to Monte Carlo predictions.

Here comes the science: When two protons collide at very high energies (travelling 99.9999964% the speed of light), they can convert some of that energy into new particles. My group was searching for collisions in which a massive "W" particle (~80x the proton mass) was created. We measured how many collisions produced this W particle along with at least one other collection of particles known as "jets" for the way they spread out their energy in the detector. The frequency of finding this type of outcome from proton-proton collisions can be predicted with quantum field theory, so we simulated events based on the theory to compare to our measurements. W+jets events are not new to the LHC. They have been measured and studied before, such as at the Tevatron. However, it is important to first understand these sorts of "known" events to be able to weed them out and find new particles, such as the Higgs Boson.

My defense talk

I also helped maintain the Regional Calorimeter Trigger (RCT) by developing software to regularly test the hardware, and PVSS software to monitor the temperature, voltages, and online status.

Selected Publications

K.S. Grogg, Jets produced in association with W-bosons in CMS at the LHC, CERN-THESIS-2011-064, August 2011.
CMS Collaboration. Jet Production Rates in Association with W and Z Bosons in pp Collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. Journal of High Energy Physics, 01, 2012.

Conference Proceedings

K.S. Grogg on behalf of the CMS Collaboration, “Rates of Jets Produced in Association with W and Z Bosons,” Proceedings of the DPF-2011 Conference, Providence, RI, August 8-13, 2011.
P. Klabbers et al (2008). “Operation and monitoring of the CMS regional calorimeter trigger hardware” CERN-2008-008 Prepared for Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle physics TWEPP 2008, Naxos, Greece, 15-19 Sep 2008. Published in *Naxos 2008, Electronics for particle physics* 133-137.