Proton Therapy Physicists Team

Dr. Xuanfeng (Leo) Ding received his Ph.D. from Wake Forest University and residency training from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2014, he participated in the first PBS compact system commissioning, the IBA ProteusONE in Willis-Knighton Medical Center in Louisiana. 

In 2015, Dr. Ding joined Beaumont Proton Therapy Center as the lead proton physicist and assistant professor. He is the Principle Investigator of several institutional and industry research grants and has published more than 40 peer-reviewed articles, two book chapters, over 100 conference abstracts, and two patents. Dr. Ding has served as the president of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Great Lakes Chapter in Michigan in 2020 and co-chaired the Physic Workshop of the European Society of Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) in 2022. Additionally, he has served on the scientific committee in numerous national and international societies such as MecaTech consortium (Belgium), DynamicARC consortium (IBA), and AAPM research seed funding initiative.

Dr. Xiaoqiang Li began his medical physics career during his Ph.D. study at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in 2007. As the first proton center in North America to treat patients using spot scanning delivery technique, Dr. Li actively joined in the research to design novel treatment techniques to improve proton therapy treatment. This research has resulted in more than 20 journal papers published in top medical physics journals. One of his impressive works was to conduct the first study of intensity modulated proton therapy (IMPT) for the treatment of advanced lung cancer, and discovered the great dosimetric advantage of IMPT, which can greatly reduce the radiation dose to normal tissue while maintaining the prescribed dose.  Follow his Ph.D. studies, Dr. Li continued a two-year comprehensive medical physics residency training at M.D Anderson Cancer Center and was certified by American Board of Radiology in therapeutic medical physics in 2015. 

Dr. Li joined Beaumont in 2015 as a staff medical physicist specializing in proton therapy.  Through his work at Beaumont Dr. Li performs routine clinical studies such as quality assurance of treatment machines and patient treatment plans/charts in support of special treatment procedures to guarantee timely and accurate treatments to the patients.  He is actively involved in clinical development projects and participates in the education of residents and students.  Dr. Li is a key member who developed the world's first, continuous and robust prototype of spot scanning proton treatment.