Carlos E Cardenas, Ph.D.
Department of Radiation Physics, Division of Radiation Oncology
About Dr. Carlos E Cardenas
Dr. Cardenas' research focuses on the integration of big data and the development of artificial intelligence applications for radiation therapy treatment planning. The bulk of his work has been focused on automating the contouring of normal tissues and target volumes to reduce uncertainties in radiotherapy treatment planning. Additionally, he has several collaborations with colleagues at MD Anderson on the investigation of quantitative image features for radiotherapy treatment outcome prediction.
Present Title & Affiliation
Primary Appointment
Assistant Professor, Department of Radiation Physics - Research, Division of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
Education & Training
Degree-Granting Education
| 2018 | The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX, USA, PHD, Medical Physics |
| 2014 | East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA, MS, Medical Physics |
| 2009 | University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, USA, BS, Physics |
Experience & Service
Institutional Committee Activities
Reviewer, Institutional Research Grant Program, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 2020 - Present
Member, Radiation Oncology Automation Group, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 2019 - Present
Member, High Performance Computing Cluster Consortium, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 2019 - Present
Member, Image-Guided Cancer Therapy Research Program, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 2019 - Present
Honors & Awards
| 2019 | Clinical Research Loan Repayment Program Award (1 L30 CA242657-01), National Cancer Institute |
| 2017 | UT MD Anderson Medical Physics Student Research Retreat Travel Award, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences |
| 2017 | Expanding Horizons Travel Award, American Association of Physicists in Medicine |
| 2017 | Andrew Sowell-Wade Huggins Scholarship for Cancer Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences |
| 2016 | The George M. Stancel, Ph.D. Fellowship in Biomedical Sciences, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences |
| 2015 | UT Health Science Center, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Travel Award, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences |
| 2005 | ADTRAN Mark C. Smith Scholarship, The University of Alabama in Huntsville |
| 2005 | University of Alabama in Huntsville Foundation Presidential Scholarship, The University of Alabama in Huntsville |
Selected Publications
Peer-Reviewed Articles
- Kamal M, Rock C, Grant S, Zaveri J, Claire Granberry R, O'Donnell B, Dursteler A, Warren BW, Volpe S, Al Feghali K, Cardenas CE, Cardoso R, Lai S, Sherif Radwan A, Fuller CD, Hutcheson KA. Dose-Volume Correlates of the Prevalence of Patient-Reported Trismus in Long-Term Survivorship After Oropharyngeal IMRT: A Cross-Sectional Dosimetric Analysis. Radiother Oncol 149:142-149, 2020.
- Wentzel A, Hanula P, van Dijk LV, Elgohari B, Mohamed ASR, Cardenas CE, Fuller CD, Vock DM, Canahuate G, Marai GE. Precision Toxicity Correlates of Tumor Spatial Proximity to Organs at Risk in Cancer Patients Receiving Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy. Radiother Oncol 148:245-251, 2020. e-Pub 2020. PMID: 32422303.
- Cardenas CE, Mohamed ASR, Yang J, Gooding M, Veeraraghavan H, Kalpathy-Cramer J, Ng SP, Ding Y, Wang J, Lai SY, Fuller CD, Sharp G. Head and Neck Cancer Patient Images for Determining Auto-Segmentation Accuracy in T2-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging Through Expert Manual Segmentations. Med Phys 47(5):2317-2322, 2020. PMID: 32418343.
- Kamal M, Peeler CR, Yepes P, Mohamed ASR, Blanchard P, Frank S, Chen L, Jethanandani A, Kuruvilla R, Greiner B, Harp J, Granberry R, Mehta V, Rock C, Hutcheson K, Cardenas C, Gunn GB, Fuller C, Mirkovic D. Radiation-Induced Hypothyroidism After Radical Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy for Oropharyngeal Carcinoma. Adv Radiat Oncol 5(1):111-119, 2020. e-Pub 2019. PMID: 32051897.
- Rhee DJ, Cardenas CE, Elhalawani H, McCarroll R, Zhang L, Yang J, Garden AS, Peterson CB, Beadle BM, Court LE. Automatic Detection of Contouring Errors Using Convolutional Neural Networks. Med Phys 46(11):5086-5097, 2019. e-Pub 2019. PMID: 31505046.
- Gay SS, Netherton TJ, Cardenas CE, Ger RB, Balter PA, Dong L, Mihailidis D, Court LE. Dosimetric Impact and Detectability of Multi-Leaf Collimator Positioning Errors on Varian Halcyon. J Appl Clin Med Phys 20(8):47-55, 2019. e-Pub 2019. PMID: 31294923.
- Cardenas CE, Yang J, Anderson BM, Court LE, Brock KB. Advances in Auto-Segmentation. Semin Radiat Oncol 29(3):185-197, 2019. PMID: 31027636.
- Ho JC, Fang P, Cardenas CE, Mohamed ASR, Fuller CD, Allen PK, Bhosale PR, Frumovitz MM, Jhingran A, Klopp AH. Volumetric Assessment of Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Predicts Outcome Following Chemoradiation for Cervical Cancer. Radiother Oncol 135:58-64, 2019. e-Pub 2019. PMID: 31015171.
- Kamal M, Rosenthal DI, Batra A, Volpe S, Elgohari B, Goepfert RP, Garden AS, Phan J, Eraj S, Dursteler A, Williams B, Smith J, Aymard J, Berends J, White A, Jethanandani A, Cardenas CE, Frank SJ, Morrison WH, Sturgis EM, Cleeland CS, Mendoza TR, Mohamed ASR, Fuller CD, Gunn GB. Fatigue Following Radiation Therapy in Nasopharyngeal Cancer Survivors: A dosimetric Analysis Incorporating Patient Report and Observer Rating. Radiotherapy and Oncology 133:25-42, 2019.
- Kisling KD, Ger RB, Netherton TJ, Cardenas CE, Owens CA, Anderson BM, Lee J, Rhee DJ, Edward SS, Gay SS, He Y, David SD, Yang J, Nitsch PL, Balter PA, Urbauer DL, Peterson CB, Court LE, Dube S. A Snapshot of Medical Physics Practice Patterns. J Appl Clin Med Phys 19(6):306-315, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30272385.
- Cardenas CE, Anderson BM, Aristophanous M, Yang J, Rhee DJ, McCarroll RE, Mohamed ASR, Kamal M, Elgohari BA, Elhalawani HM, Fuller CD, Rao A, Garden AS, Court LE. Auto-Delineation of Oropharyngeal Clinical Target Volumes Using 3D Convolutional Neural Networks. Phys Med Biol 63(21):215026, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30403188.
- Kamal M, Mohamed ASR, Volpe S, Zaveri J, Barrow MP, Gunn GB, Lai SY, Ferrarotto R, Lewin JS, Rosenthal DI, Jethanandani A, Meheissen MAM, Mulder SL, Cardenas CE, Fuller CD, Hutcheson KA. Radiotherapy Dose-Volume Parameters Predict Videofluoroscopy-Detected Dysphagia per DIGEST after IMRT for Oropharyngeal Cancer: Results of a Prospective Registry. Radiother Oncol 128(3):442-451, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 29961581.
- Ng SP, Bahig H, Wang J, Cardenas CE, Lucci A, Hall CS, Meas S, Sarli VN, Yuan Y, Urbauer DL, Ding Y, Ikner S, Dinh V, Elgohari BA, Johnson JM, Skinner HD, Gunn GB, Garden AS, Phan J, Rosenthal DI, Morrison WH, Frank SJ, Hutcheson KA, Mohamed ASR, Lai SY, Ferrarotto R, MacManus MP, Fuller CD. Predicting Treatment Response Based on Dual Assessment of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Kinetics and Circulating Tumor Cells in Patients with Head and Neck Cancer (PREDICT-HN): Matching 'Liquid Biopsy' and Quantitative Tumor Modeling. BMC Cancer 18(1):903, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30231854.
- Ng SP, Dyer BA, Kalpathy-Cramer J, Mohamed ASR, Awan MJ, Gunn GB, Phan J, Zafereo M, Debnam JM, Lewis CM, Colen RR, Kupferman ME, Guha-Thakurta N, Canahuate G, Marai GE, Vock D, Hamilton B, Holland J, Cardenas CE, Lai S, Rosenthal D, Fuller CD. A Prospective in Silico Analysis of Interdisciplinary and Interobserver Spatial Variability in Post-Operative Target Delineation of High-Risk Oral Cavity Cancers: Does Physician Specialty Matter?. Clin Transl Radiat Oncol 12:40-46, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30148217.
- McCarroll RE, Beadle BM, Balter PA, Burger H, Cardenas CE, Dalvie S, Followill DS, Kisling KD, Mejia M, Naidoo K, Nelson CL, Peterson CB, Vorster K, Wetter J, Zhang L, Court LE, Yang J. Retrospective Validation and Clinical Implementation of Automated Contouring of Organs at Risk in the Head and Neck: A Step Toward Automated Radiation Treatment Planning for Low- and Middle-Income Countries. J Glob Oncol(4):1-11, 2018. PMID: 30110221.
- Cardenas CE, McCarroll RE, Court LE, Elgohari BA, Elhalawani H, Fuller CD, Kamal MJ, Meheissen MAM, Mohamed ASR, Rao A, Williams B, Wong A, Yang J, Aristophanous M. Deep Learning Algorithm for Auto-Delineation of High-Risk Oropharyngeal Clinical Target Volumes With Built-In Dice Similarity Coefficient Parameter Optimization Function. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 101(2):468-478, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 29559291.
- Mohamed ASR, Bahig H, Aristophanous M, Blanchard P, Kamal M, Ding Y, Cardenas CE, Brock KK, Lai SY, Hutcheson KA, Phan J, Wang J, Ibbott G, Gabr RE, Narayana PA, Garden AS, Rosenthal DI, Gunn GB, Fuller CD. Prospective in Silico Study of the Feasibility and Dosimetric Advantages of MRI-Guided Dose Adaptation for Human Papillomavirus Positive Oropharyngeal Cancer Patients Compared with Standard IMRT. Clin Transl Radiat Oncol 11:11-18, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30014042.
- Kamal M, Ng SP, Eraj SA, Rock CD, Pham B, Messer JA, Garden AS, Morrison WH, Phan J, Frank SJ, El-Naggar AK, Johnson JM, Ginsberg LE, Ferrarotto R, Lewin JS, Hutcheson KA, Cardenas CE, Zafereo ME, Lai SY, Hessel AC, Weber RS, Gunn GB, Fuller CD, Mohamed ASR, Rosenthal DI. Three-Dimensional Imaging Assessment of Anatomic Invasion and Volumetric Considerations for Chemo/Radiotherapy-Based Laryngeal Preservation in T3 Larynx Cancer. Oral Oncol 79:1-8, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 29598944.
- Court LE, Kisling K, McCarroll R, Zhang L, Yang J, Simonds H, du Toit M, Trauernicht C, Burger H, Parkes J, Mejia M, Bojador M, Balter P, Branco D, Steinmann A, Baltz G, Gay S, Anderson B, Cardenas CE, Jhingran A, Shaitelman S, Bogler O, Schmeller K, Followill D, Howell R, Nelson C, Peterson C, Beadle B. Radiation Planning Assistant - A Streamlined, Fully Automated Radiotherapy Treatment Planning System. J Vis Exp(134), 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 29708544.
- Ger RB, Cardenas CE, Anderson BM, Yang J, Mackin DS, Zhang L, Court LE. Guidelines and Experience Using Imaging Biomarker Explorer (IBEX) for Radiomics. J Vis Exp(131), 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 29364284.
- ElhalawaniH, Kanwar A, Mohaned ASR, White A, Zafereo J, Wong A, Berends J, Abohashem S, Williams B, Aymard JM, Perni S, Messer J, Warren B, Yousset B, Yang P, Meheissen MAM, Kamal M, Elgohari B, Ger RB, Cardenas CE, Fave X, Zhang L, Mackin D, Marai GE, Vock DM, Canahuate GM, Lai SY, Gunn GB, Garden AS, Rosenthal DI, Court L, Fuller CD. Investigation of Radiomic Signatures for Local Recurrence Using Primary Tumor Texture Analysis in Oropharyngeal Head and Neck Cancer Patients. Sci Rep 8(1):1524, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 29367653.
- Schakel T, Peltenburg B, Dankbaar J, Cardenas CE, Aristophanous M, Terhaard CHJ, Hoogduin JM, Phillippens MEP. Evaluation of diffusion weighted imaging for tumor delineation in head-and-neck radiotherapy by comparison with automatically segmented F-fluorodeosyglucose positron emission tomography. Physics and Imaging in Radiation Oncology 5:13-18, 2018.
- Mohamed ASR, Cardenas CE, Garden AS, Awan MJ, Rock CD, Westergaard SA, Brandon Gunn G, Belal AM, El-Gowily AG, Lai SY, Rosenthal DI, Fuller CD, Aristophanous M. Patterns-of-Failure Guided Biological Target Volume Definition for Head and Neck Cancer Patients: FDG-PET and Dosimetric Analysis of Dose Escalation Candidate Subregions. Radiother Oncol 124(2):248-255, 2017. e-Pub 2017. PMID: 28774596.
- Cardenas CE, Mohamed ASR, Tao R, Wong AJR, Awan MJ, Kuruvila S, Aristophanous M, Gunn GB, Phan J, Beadle BM, Frank SJ, Garden AS, Morrison WH, Fuller CD, Rosenthal DI. Prospective Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Real-Time Peer Review Quality Assurance Rounds Incorporating Direct Physical Examination for Head and Neck Cancer Radiation Therapy. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 98(3):532-540, 2017. e-Pub 2016. PMID: 28258898.
- Rubinstein AE, Ingram WS, Anderson BM, Gay SS, Fave XJ, Ger RB, McCarroll RE, Owens CA, Netherton TJ, Kisling KD, Court LE, Yang J, Li Y, Lee J, Mackin DS, Cardenas CE. Cost-Effective Immobilization for Whole Brain Radiation Therapy. J Appl Clin Med Phys 18(4):116-122, 2017. e-Pub 2017. PMID: 28585732.
- Cardenas CE, Nitsch PL, Kudchadker RJ, Howell RM, Kry SF. Out-of-Field Doses and Neutron Dose Equivalents for Electron Beams from Modern Varian and Elekta Linear Accelerators. J Appl Clin Med Phys 17(4):442-455, 2016. e-Pub 2016. PMID: 27455499.
- Anderson BM, Lin EY, Cardenas CE, Gress DA, Erwin WD, Odisio BS, Koay EJ, Brock KK. Automated Contouring of Contrast and Noncontrast Computed Tomography Liver Images with Fully Convolutional Networks. Adv Radiat Oncol. e-Pub 2020.
- Ger RB, Yang J, Ding Y, Jacobsen MC, Cardenas CE, Fuller CD, Howell RM, Li H, Stafford RJ, Zhou S, Court LE. Synthetic Head and Neck and Phantom Images for Determining Deformable Image Registration Accuracy in Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Med Phys. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30007075.
Abstracts
- Elhalawani H, Lin TA, Volpe S, Mohamed ASR, White AL, Zafereo J, Wong AJ, Berends JE, AboHashem S, Williams B, Aymard JM, Kanwar A, Perni S, Rock CD, Cooksey L, Campbell S, Yang P, Nguyen K, Ger RB, Cardenas CE, Fave XJ, Sansone C, Piantadosi G, Marrone S, Liu R, Huang C, Yu K, Li T, Yu Y, Zhang Y, Zhu H, Morris JS, Baladandayuthapani V, Shumway JW, Ghosh A, Pöhlmann A, Phoulady HA, Goyal V, Canahuate G, Marai GE, Vock D, Lai SY, Mackin DS, Court LE, Freymann J, Farahani K, Kaplathy-Cramer J, Fuller CD. Machine Learning Applications in Head and Neck Radiation Oncology: Lessons From Open-Source Radiomics Challenges. Front Oncol 8:294, 2018. e-Pub 2018. PMID: 30175071.
Grant & Contract Support
| Title: | Leveraging artificial intelligence to bring high quality radiotherapy treatment planning for rectal cancers to community hospitals |
| Funding Source: | University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center |
| Role: | Principal Investigator |
| Title: | A consortium for automated radiotherapy treatment planning in Latin America |
| Funding Source: | Sister Institution Network Fund |
| Role: | Collaborator |
| Title: | Artificial intelligence to automate the use of radiotherapy to treat acute onological conditions such as severe pain, bleeding and neurological symptoms in patients with advance cancers |
| Funding Source: | Wellcome Trust |
| Role: | Co-Investigator |
| Title: | Improving Treatments of Local Liver Disease with Biomechanical Modeling and Deep Learning |
| Funding Source: | SIR Foundation |
| Role: | Collaborator |
| Title: | Rapid and Intelligent Automatic Planning for Gamma Knife Radiosurgery |
| Funding Source: | University of Texas MD Anderson Department of Radiation Physics Internal Grant |
| Role: | Co-Principal Investigator |
| Title: | |
| Funding Source: | Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) |
| Role: | Co-Investigator |