Daniel Vergara, MS, DABR

Medical Physicist

Diagnostic Physics

Expertise

Clinical Responsibilities:

All aspects of clinical diagnostic imaging, including measurement and verification of radiation doses and quality control from all imaging modalities.

Dose optimization and quality management.

CT/MRI protocol management and optimization.

ACR accreditation and JC requirements

Radiation safety policies and protocols

Biography

I am a dedicated ABR and MQSA certified medical physicist with hands-on clinical experience, teaching and research. I have an excellent work ethic and an eagerness to learn, master, and apply new technologies and techniques. I am analytical with strong problem-solving skills, and I excel at managing multiple objectives and following tasks through to completion. I am naturally friendly with a positive attitude and a diverse, cross-cultural background, able to easily connect and relate to other cultures and establish working relationships. My ethics align strongly with those of the AAPM: I celebrate diversity in medical physics and strive to produce the best care to patients and advancement of my profession, collectively, which can only be obtained by including all peoples. Most importantly, I am team-oriented and enjoy contributing to successful projects. I have ten years of medical physics experience. Throughout this time, I have been involved in quality control for all imaging modalities found in a radiology department, worked in radiological and CT protocol optimization for both adult and pediatric patients, collaborated with and headed research projects related to fluoroscopy and CT dosimetry, CT shielding methodology, and radiography and ultrasound quality control. I also have experience and interest in teaching radiology residents, medical physics residents and technologists. While at Yale University Medical Center, I routinely manage the calculation and reporting of patient skin dosimetry from high fluoroscopy dose procedures and collaborate with the team to prepare our medical physics residents. I have been given Lecturer title at Yale University’s School of Medicine, expanded the repeat reject analysis program into two more of our health system’s delivery networks, updated all of the annual physics evaluation testing templates, mentored four medical physics residents, have had six abstracts accepted into the AAPM Spring Clinical and Annual Meetings, and have been an invited speaker to the Connecticut (CAMPS) AAPM chapter meeting in May 2022. While at Yale School of Medicine, I also co-developed the diagnostic medical physics residency program, successfully helping it acquire CAMPEP accreditation, and set the health system into compliance to TJC for fluoroscopy dose tracking and monitoring, five delivery networks in total. In doing so, I have eliminated calculation error in skin dose estimation by over 50% while doubling fluoroscopy dose tracking in the health system. I have accomplished this by creating and managing a sophisticated parameterized and model-based dose calculation algorithm. I am actively pursuing several other research projects in skin dosimetry of fluoroscopically guided procedures, an area of current interest to the radiology community. Other tasks of note include involvement in AAPM subcommittees and task groups, like Maintenance of Certification Subcommittee, Computer Aided Image Analysis Subcommittee and co-author to TG No. 273 (submission in progress). My intent is to utilize these experiences to provide the best quality control management to radiological systems and implement or improve upon the protocol management system(s) to radiography, CT and MRI. I also intend to teach students and residents who require or desire such an education; and I plan to continue clinically applicable research projects.
My career goal is to contribute excellence in research and practice to the field. I have a work ethic that drives me to fully integrate my abilities into my work environment and I am very excited to be part of the team at University of Washington.

Research Interests

Evaluation of advanced CT and MRI acquisition technologies

Protocol optimization methods in radiology and radiation dosimetry

Education