Dr. Alonso Gutierrez of the University of Texas Health Center in San Antonio spoke on the impact of physics on medicine. (Spencer J Eggers/The Daily Campus)

Medicine and physics make a connection. Alpha Epsilon Delta (AED), SMU’s Health Preprofessional Honor Society, and the physics department presented guest speaker Dr. Alonso Gutierrez on Friday. The lecture highlighted the increasing use of image-guided, stereotactic radiotherapy techniques in cancer treatment.

An SMU graduate, Dr. Gutierrez works as an assistant professor in the department of radiation oncology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

“It is astonishing to see that you can treat cancer, something you can’t see, with something you still can’t see and it goes away,” Dr. Gutierrez said.

In today’s world of medicine, the physicists actually play the roles in assessing and making sure the machines for cancer therapy are highly accurate and provide precision modeling. Medical physicists work to characterize the radiation and standardize an accurate dose calibration for patients.

Tumor cells are not efficient in repairing themselves as normal cells. This flaw in the tumor cell is what doctors use to their advantage when it comes to cancer therapy. By fractionating the amount of radiation delivered to a patient, you allow time for the normal cells to repair while the cancerous cells are slowly being treated and degenerated.

“Everything in life is related to physics in one way or another. A lot of it is having to get over the initial hesitation that physics is a challenge for students. It is different — it isn’t like biology — but I think pre-med students gain a lot from it,” Gutierrez said.

The joint venture between AED and the physics department was designed to show pre-medical students that there is a field that combines both physics and medicine and the application of the two can make a difference.

“We knew that many pre-med students think that physics is not relevant to their career, and we thought that this [lecture] would be a nice way to bridge the gap between medicine and physics. To also show that there is an actual junction and there are a broad range of careers with a physics degree,” Physics Professor Jodi Cooley said.

Medical physics has become a fast-evolving field, primarily attributed to technology. The skill set necessary has also diversified with the increasing study of molecular biology to physics interactions with radiation. Due to the fast nature and adaption of new technologies provides numerous opportunities for research and development.

“When you can see the application of physics and biology, it is fascinating because physics is underneath it all. You can answer the questions of why things act a certain way,” junior Holly Howard said.