#14: James Kerns joins Arfon and Abby to discuss how Pylinac automates quality assurance for radiotherapy, running an open source project while teaching yourself to code, and the growing open source ecosystem for medical physics.

James is a technical lead at Radformation, focusing on image analysis.

You can follow James on LinkedIn and GitHub.

Episode highlights:

• [00:37] - The Importance of Quality Assurance in Radiotherapy
• [05:19] - James's Journey into Coding
• [07:48] - How Pylinac Works
• [09:56] - Community and Support
• [16:43] - Commercial Use and Collaboration
• [19:53] - Transitioning from MATLAB to Python
• [21:27] - Maintaining Pylinac Over the Years
• [23:21] - Challenges in Software Development
• [26:34] - The Importance of Documentation
• [29:01] - Publishing in JOSS
• [35:23] - Future of Pylinac and New Projects

Links:

• JOSS paper: https://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.06001
• Pylinac repository: https://github.com/jrkerns/pylinac
• Awesome Medical Physics: https://github.com/jrkerns/awesome-medphys
• quacc: https://github.com/jrkerns/quaac
• Radformation: https://www.radformation.com/
• James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-kerns/, GitHub: https://github.com/jrkerns
• The Journal of Open Source Software (Twitter/X, blog)
• @arfon on (fosstodon, Linkedin, GitHub, website)
• @abbycabs on (Twitter/X, hachyderm, bsky, Linkedin, GitHub, website)
• Donate to JOSS

---

Supercharge your research with the latest scientific software showcased in the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS). Hear directly from authors on their work, their motivations, and new ways open source software can accelerate your work.

Hosted by editor-in-chief Arfon Smith and founding editor Abby Cabunoc Mayes, each episode features an interview with different authors of published papers in JOSS. Tune in to learn about the latest developments in research software engineering and open science, and how they are changing the way research is conducted.

New episodes every other Thursday.