Dr. Sarah Cuddy-Walsh

Medical Physicist and X-ray Specialist in the Ionizing and Acoustic Radiation Physical Sciences Division
Consumer and Clinical Radiation Protection Bureau
Health Canada

Address: 775 Brookfield Road, Ottawa, ON, K1A 1C1
 
Dr. Cuddy-Walsh is an X-ray Specialist with Health Canada’s Consumer and Clinical Radiation Protection Bureau and an Alumni of Carleton's Medical Physics program (2018). She is also active in the medical physics community locally as a member of the Ottawa Medical Physics Institute (OMPI), nationally as Health Canada’s representative to the Imaging Committee of the Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists (COMP), and internationally as a member of an International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) working group developing standards for diagnostic and interventional X-ray equipment. 

At Health Canada, Sarah is able to dedicate about half of her time to research regarding the safety of X-ray devices for Canadians. She is currently working on:

•    comparing different methods for indexing radiation output from dental cone-beam computed tomography devices;
•    evaluating the accuracy of different X-ray dosimeters for measuring radiation from pulsed x-ray devices; and
•    building lab capabilities for Monte-Carlo modelling to estimate radiation doses and their spatial distribution from X-ray devices.

Dr. Cuddy-Walsh has also collaborated with Carleton’s Engineering department since 2021 (capstone project MAAE 4907) to design and develop a robot to improve the accuracy and precision of positioning for X-ray dosimetry measurements. Opportunities exist for physics students to test and use this device in laboratory experiments as well as for interdisciplinary collaboration regarding its continued development.