Abstract

Physicists have and continue to play a major role in the creation and introduction of novel technology into medical care. This review covers some of the highlights of contributions of medical physicists to the field of radiation oncology during the history of the AAPM. While not comprehensive, the broad scope of developments and their impact hints at the importance of the medical physicist in advancing the field in the past, present, and future.

Highlights

  • One of the most important roles that medical physicists have played is the development and introduction of new and useful technologies into clinical medicine

  • Others were outside technologies that were put to work in the clinical environmente.g., radionuclides

  • Still others were developed for medical use outside the hospital and applied clinically with medical physics helpe.g., image intensifiers, gamma cameras

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Summary

Introduction

One of the most important roles that medical physicists have played is the development and introduction of new and useful technologies into clinical medicine. Some of these technologies were invented and implemented within the medical physics communitye.g., linear accelerators, digital subtraction angiography, radiation therapy treatment planning. Computer based treatment planning was proposed in the 1950s by Tsien.19 The increasing availability of digital computers provided Stovall and Shalek at Anderson20 and Balter and Laughlin at Memorial21 means to develop brachytherapy dosimetry programs in the early sixties.

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