Medical Physics

What do Medical Physicists Do?

Medical physicists are concerned with three areas of activity: clinical service and consultation, research and development, and teaching . On the average their time is distributed equally among these three areas.

What is radiation therapy?

Radiation therapy uses high-energy radiation to shrink tumors and kill cancer cells. X-rays, gamma rays, and charged particles are types of radiation used for cancer treatment.

External beam radiation therapy

The radiation may be delivered by a machine outside the body (external-beam radiation therapy), 1. Diagnostic or Imaging Physics and Radiological Sciences

Machines use in external radiotherapy

Radiographic X-rays :
X-rays with photon energies above 510 keV (below 0.2 0.1 nm wavelength) are called hard X-rays, while those with lower energy are called soft Xrays. Due to their penetrating ability hard X-rays are widely used to image the inside of objects, e.g. in medical radiography.

 Mammography : A mammogram is an x-ray examination of the breasts, used to detect

and diagnose breast diseases. Mammography is the most effective method of detecting cancer at an early stage, before the woman or a physician can feel it.

 Angiography or arteriography :
is a medical imaging technique used to visualize the inside, or lumen, of blood vessels and organs of the body, with particular interest in the arteries, veins and the heart chambers. This is traditionally done by injecting a radio-opaque contrast agent into the blood vessel and imaging using X-ray based techniques such as fluoroscopy. Radiocontrast agents are typically iodine or barium compounds

X-ray computed tomography (x-ray CT) : is a technology that uses computer-processed xrays to produce tomographic images (virtual 'slices') of specific areas of the scanned object, allowing the user to see what is inside it without cutting it open. Usage of CT has increased dramatically over the last two decades in many countries.[6] An estimated 72 million scans were performed in the United States in 2007.[7] One study estimated that as many as 0.4% of current cancers in the United States are due to CTs performed in the past and that this may increase to as high as 1.5 to 2% with 2007 rates of CT usage

Ultrasound : is an oscillating sound pressure wave with a frequency greater than the upper limit of the human hearing range. Ultrasound is thus not separated from 'normal' (audible) sound based on differences in physical properties, only the fact that humans cannot hear it. Although this limit varies from person to person, it is approximately 20kilohertz (20,000 hertz) in healthy, young adults. Ultrasound devices operate with frequencies from 20 kHz up to several gigahertz.

Ultrasound_range_diagram.svg (SVG file, nominally 481 114 pixels, file size: 128 KB)

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI), or magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) is amedical imaging technique used in radiology to investigate the anatomy and function of the body in both health and disease. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields and radiowaves to form images of the body. The technique is widely used in hospitals for medical diagnosis, staging of disease and for follow-up without exposure to ionizing radiation.

 2. Radiation Oncology or Therapeutic Physics The majority of medical physicists currently working in the US, Pakistan, Canada, and some western countries are of this group. A Radiation Therapy physicist typically deals with linear accelerator (Linac) systems on a daily basis, as well as more advanced modalities . Tomotherapy : is a type of radiation therapy in which the radiation is delivered slice-by-slice (hence the use of the Greek prefixtomo which means "slice"). This method of delivery differs from other forms of external beam radiation therapy in which the entire tumor volume is irradiated at one time.

Gamma Knife: A Gamma Knife typically contains 201 cobalt-60 sources of approximately 30 curies (1.1 TBq) each placed in a circular array in a heavily shielded assembly. The device aims gamma radiation through a target point in the patient's brain. The patient wears a specialized helmet that is surgically fixed to the skull, so that the brain tumor remains stationary at the target point of the gamma rays. An ablative dose of radiation is thereby sent through the tumor in one treatment session, while surrounding brain tissues are relatively spared.

3. Nuclear Medicine:

This is a branch of medicine that uses radiation to provide information about the functioning of a person's specific organs or to treat disease. In most cases, the information is used by physicians to make a quick, accurate diagnosis of the patient's illness. The thyroid, bones, heart, liver and many other organs can be easily imaged, and disorders in their function revealed. In some cases radiation can be used to treat diseased organs, or tumors . Five Nobel Laureates have been intimately involved with the use of radioactive tracers in medicine. Over 10,000 hospitals worldwide use radioisotopes in medicine, and about 90% of the procedures are for diagnosis. The most common radioisotope used in diagnosis is technetium-99, with some 30 million procedures per year, accounting for 80% of all nuclear medicine procedures worldwide.