The research activity of dr. Giorgio Russo begins in 2002 in the field of medical physics, in particular on the use of the Monte Carlo method, with GEANT4 toolkit, in hadron therapy, under the supervision of Dr. Cirrone and Prof. Cuttone; since 2004 is an official member of the GEANT4 team. This activity has laid the realization of a complex application that reproduces the experimental beam line CATANA, for protons, and the zero-degree beam line, for carbon ions, and which allows to carry out dosimetric studies and optimization of the elements of lines. The application, which has become an advanced example for users of GEANT4, currently is able to manage DICOM images from CT and microCT scanners, allowing you to perform dosimetric studies for specific applications, such as small animal preclinical studies to optimize the hadron therapy treatment and to assess the response of some drugs radio sensibiliser. This activity has generated numerous publications and participation at national and international conferences. Studies in medical physics with the Monte Carlo method have also affected other radiotherapy techniques and in particular: the stereotactic radiotherapy with equipment Gamma Knife, which allowed us to highlight, in 2007, a flaw in the calculation of the dose by the commercial treatment planning system, corrected by the company in the latest version of the application, in 2016; and the intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT) with electron beams, which has allowed us to develop a radiation protection device in the patient's breast treatments, optimized with respect to commercial ones.

In the field of molecular imaging, with technology PET / CT, he has performed several studies in collaboration with researcher of the Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology (IBFM) of CNR in Milan and clinicians at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, the Fondazione Istituto San Raffaele in Cefalu and the AO Cannizzaro in Catania. The studies included the development of the radiopharmaceutical uptake quantification methods both prognostic and diagnostic purpose, correlating the data to clinical, free time to disease and survival, those morphological from CT and MRI, and biological ones, the presence of genetic mutations. Furthermore, always in the field of molecular imaging has developed, in collaboration with researcher of the CNR-IBFM in Cefalù, methods of automatic segmentation of the images that allow you to apply PET imaging to the planning of radiation treatments, which would otherwise be subject to significant errors in interpretation caused by the low spatial resolution of the technique.

Recently he has been involved in radiobiology studies on preclinical model developing, thanks to the collaboration of Dr. Cuttone (LNS-INFN), the dr Ippolito (AO Cannizzaro) and Prof. Parenti (UNICT-BIOMETEC) of a chain that allows to perform, using the specific expertise of different institution and these devices, hadrontherapy studies with molecular imaging and biological analyses. The networking of dosimetric skills in hadron therapy, thanks to the presence of Monte Carlo applications, the Nuclear Medicine skills, with different radiotracers, expertise in the development of PET images, both for quantification and for segmentation, and of molecular biology skills, it allows you to make non-executable studies in other facilities in Italy.