The British Institute of Radiology: Annual Congress and Exhibition

Abstract

THE tenth Annual Congress and Exhibition of the British Institute of Radiology was held at the Central Hall, Westminster, on December 2-4, 1936. The arrangements differed to some extent from those of previous years, notably in the inclusion of a section of the exhibition devoted to physical research. Among the institutions represented in this section were St. Bartholomew's, the Royal Cancer and the Mount Vernon Hospitals, Radium Beam Therapy Research, and the National Physical Laboratory, while Dr. Russell Reynolds showed an X-ray cinematograph apparatus. The section showed clearly the close connexion between physical research, even modern atomic physics, and the medical applications of radiations of all types. The exhibit of radium beam therapy research was concerned with a study of induced radioactivity, the principal item being a Geiger counter connected to a cathode ray oscillograph, the screen of which is photographed on a 35 mm. cine film operated by a mechanism so designed that the speed of motion of the film varies logarithmically with time. By the use of this device, the film moves quickly enough to record the rapid counts of a newly activated material but slows down as the activity decays, so that considerable economy in the cost of film results.