William Jeffrey Zabel, PhD
Biography
Jeff grew up in Ontario Canada where he obtained his Honours Bachelor of Science at McMaster University in the Biophysics Co-op program. He discovered his passion for Medical Physics during a co-op work term at a local cancer center. He then went on to complete a CAMPEP Ph.D. at the University of Toronto where he studied the effects of high dose per fraction radiation therapy on the tumor microvasculature using optical coherence angiography and perfusion MRI. Throughout his Ph.D. Jeff was employed as a Linear Accelerator Quality Assurance Technician at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center. His research interests include integrating advanced imaging methods for biologically guided radiotherapy as well as the development of scintillator-based phantoms for proton therapy QA.
Jeff joined the Stanford University Medical Physics Residency in 2025.
Publications
Saeidi T, Foltz WD, Zabel WJ, Daly MJ, Vitkin A, Akens MK, Lilge L. Are blood flow and blood volume predictors of localized photosensitizer accumulation in the brain? Photodiagnosis Photodyn Ther. 2025;104689. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pdpdt.2025.104689.
Zabel WJ, Contreras-Sánchez HA, Allam N, Qureshi MM, Flueraru C, Taylor E, Vitkin A. Quantification of the tumour microvascular response to high dose-per-fraction radiotherapy. Phys Med Biol. 2025; 70:125015. doi: https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6560/ade048.
Louie DC, Kulcsar C, Contreras-Sánchez HA, Zabel WJ, Lee TK, Vitkin A. Snapshot imaging of stokes vector polarization speckle in turbid optical phantoms and in vivo tissues. Photonics. 2025; 12(1):59. https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics12010059
Contreras-Sánchez HA, Zabel WJ, Flueraru C, Lilge L, Taylor E, Vitkin A. Characterizing normal and tumour blood microcirculatory systems using optical coherence tomography. Photonics. 2024; 11(9):891. https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics11090891
Zabel WJ*, Allam N*, Contreras Sanchez HA, Foltz WD, Flueraru C, Taylor E, Vitkin A. A dorsal skinfold window chamber tumor mouse model for combined intravital microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging in translational cancer research. J Vis Exp. 2024;(206). doi: https://doi.org/10.3791/66383.
Zabel WJ*, Allam N*, Foltz WD, Flueraru C, Taylor E, Vitkin A. Bridging the macro to micro resolution gap with angiographic optical coherence tomography and dynamic contrast enhanced MRI. Sci Rep. 2022;12:3159. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07000-1.
Allam N, Zabel WJ, Demidov V, Jones B, Flueraru C, Taylor E, Vitkin A. Longitudinal in-vivo quantification of tumour microvascular heterogeneity by optical coherence angiography in pre-clinical radiation therapy. Sci Rep. 2022;12:6140. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09625-8.
Majumdar A, Allam N, Zabel WJ, Demidov V, Flueraru C, Vitkin A. Binary dose level classification of tumour microvascular response to radiotherapy using artificial intelligence analysis of optical coherence tomography images. Sci Rep. 2022;12:13995. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18393-4.
Zabel WJ, Conway JL, Gladwish A, Skliarenko J, Didiodato G, Goorts-Matthews L, Michalak A, Reistetter S, King J, Nakonechny K, Malkoske K, Tran MN, McVicar N. Clinical evaluation of deep learning and atlas-based auto-contouring of bladder and rectum for prostate radiation therapy. Pract Radiat Oncol. 2021;11(1):e80-e89. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prro.2020.05.013.
Zabel WJ, Hagner KP, Livesey BJ, Marsh JA, Setayeshgar S, Lynch M, Higgs PG. Evolution of protein interfaces in multimers and fibrils. J Chem Phys. 2019;150(22):225102. doi: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5086042.
*Authors contributed equally.
Awards and Honors
- Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2022-2024)
- Princess Margaret Foundation Graduate Fellowship in Cancer Research (2020-2022, 2024)
- Dr. J.R. Cunningham Graduate Fellowship in Cancer Research (2023)
- Terry Fox Foundation STARS21 Alumni Scholarship (2022)
- Best poster presentation at the U of T Medical Biophysics Symposium (2022)
- Best oral presentation in cancer imaging at the Imaging Network Ontario Conference (2022)
- 5th most downloaded manuscript in Practical Radiation Oncology in 2021
- Terry Fox Foundation STARS21 Scholarship (2021)
- Cancer Care Ontario Harold E. Johns Studentship (2019)
- NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (2018,2019)