Benjamin Ziemer

Dr. Benjamin P. Ziemer PhD had a winding academic journey arriving where he is today. He majored in Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics at UW Madison. He obtained his PhD in high energy particle physics at UC Irvine for his work on the MINERvA neutrino scattering experiment located at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He pursued medical physics in order to have his work reach a broader cross section of the population. In his early medical career, he was a post-doctoral researcher at both UC Irvine and UC San Diego where he assisted in the development of a low-dose, CT-based cardiac perfusion protocol and a blind-study verified, semi-automated, patient-specific clinical support tool for radiation treatment plan generation for brain metastases, respectively. After completing a medical physics residency at UC San Francisco, he joined the Radiation Oncology Department faculty where he was co-lead of the Gamma Knife radiosurgery and lead of the Intracranial brachytherapy program. Additionally, he was the lead of the Stereotactic Radiosurgery and Stanford Gamma Knife Exchange medical physic residency program while also assisting in numerous other educational activities.Now at CHLA/USC, he hopes to bring all of these strengths and more to contribute to the clinic, academic and research programs. As a member of numerous national and international professional organizations, such as AAPM, ASTRO, RSS, ISRS, reROG, COG and PENTEC, he will work will colleagues to research methods to bringing automation to the clinic, understanding and minimizing uncertainties in radiation oncology, and improving patient outcomes and reducing toxicities.

• Southern California Chapter of American Association of Physicists in Medicine: Norm Baily Award, 2016
• American Association of Physicists in Medicine: Best in Imaging Physics Award, 2015
• Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory: Visiting Scholar Award, 2009-2010
• Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory: Visiting Scholars Award, 2008-2009
• University of California Irvine: Masters Degree Fellowship, 2006
• University of Wisconsin Madison: Chinese Department Language Award, 2003

• ACR-ARS Practice Parameter for the Performance of Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy. Am J Clin Oncol. 2025 Jun 23.. View in PubMed
• Author Correction: Multi-institutional atlas of brain metastases informs spatial modeling for precision imaging and personalized therapy. Nat Commun. 2025 Jun 02; 16(1):5096.. View in PubMed
• Multi-institutional atlas of brain metastases informs spatial modeling for precision imaging and personalized therapy. Nat Commun. 2025 May 15; 16(1):4536.. View in PubMed
• Spot-Scanning Confocal Photon Beams for Hypofractionated Brain Radiosurgery. Technol Cancer Res Treat. 2025 Jan-Dec; 24:15330338251342873.. View in PubMed
• Tungsten Filled 3-Dimensional Printed Lung Blocks for Total Body Irradiation. Pract Radiat Oncol. 2024 May-Jun; 14(3):267-276.. View in PubMed
• Adverse radiation effect versus tumor progression following stereotactic radiosurgery for brain metastases: Implications of radiologic uncertainty. J Neurooncol. 2024 Feb; 166(3):535-546.. View in PubMed
• Development and multi-institutional validation of a convolutional neural network to detect vertebral body mis-alignments in 2D x-ray setup images. Med Phys. 2023 May; 50(5):2662-2671.. View in PubMed
• Adverse radiation effect and freedom from progression following repeat stereotactic radiosurgery for brain metastases. J Neurosurg. 2023 01 01; 138(1):104-112.. View in PubMed
• Resection with intraoperative cesium-131 brachytherapy as salvage therapy for recurrent brain tumors. J Neurosurg. 2022 Oct 01; 137(4):924-930.. View in PubMed
• Quality Assurance for AI-Based Applications in Radiation Therapy. Semin Radiat Oncol. 2022 10; 32(4):421-431.. View in PubMed
• Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy and High-Dose-Rate Brachytherapy Boost in Combination With Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy for Localized Prostate Cancer: A Single-Institution Propensity Score Matched Analysis. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2021 06 01; 110(2):429-437.. View in PubMed
• Attention-Aware Discrimination for MR-to-CT Image Translation Using Cycle-Consistent Generative Adversarial Networks. Radiol Artif Intell. 2020 Mar; 2(2):e190027.. View in PubMed
• Automated Closed- and Open-Loop Validation of Knowledge-Based Planning Routines Across Multiple Disease Sites. Pract Radiat Oncol. 2019 Jul – Aug; 9(4):257-265.. View in PubMed
• Comprehensive Assessment of Coronary Artery Disease by Using First-Pass Analysis Dynamic CT Perfusion: Validation in a Swine Model. Radiology. 2018 01; 286(1):93-102.. View in PubMed
• Fully automated, comprehensive knowledge-based planning for stereotactic radiosurgery: Preclinical validation through blinded physician review. Pract Radiat Oncol. 2017 Nov – Dec; 7(6):e569-e578.. View in PubMed
• Heuristic knowledge-based planning for single-isocenter stereotactic radiosurgery to multiple brain metastases. Med Phys. 2017 Oct; 44(10):5001-5009.. View in PubMed
• Functional Assessment of Coronary Artery Disease Using Whole-Heart Dynamic Computed Tomographic Perfusion. Circ Cardiovasc Imaging. 2016 Dec; 9(12).. View in PubMed
• Dynamic CT perfusion measurement in a cardiac phantom. Int J Cardiovasc Imaging. 2015 Oct; 31(7):1451-9.. View in PubMed

• Chang, Eric
• Zada, Gabriel
• Nayak, Krishna