Radiation Physics for Medical Physicists

This book is intended as a textbook for a course in radiation physics in a- demic medical physics graduate programs. The book may also be of interest to the large number of professionals, not only physicists, who in their daily occupations deal with various aspects of medical physics and have a need to improve their understanding of radiation physics. Medical physics is a rapidly growing specialty of physics, concerned with the application of physics to medicine mainly, but not exclusively, in the - plication of ionizing radiation to diagnosis and treatment of human disease. In contrast to other physics specialties, such as nuclear physics, solid-state physics, and high-energy physics, studies of modern medical physics attract a much broader base of professionals including graduate students in me- cal physics, medical residents and technology students in radiation oncology and diagnostic imaging, students in biomedical engineering, and students in radiationsafetyandradiationdosimetryeducationalprograms.Theseprof- sionals have diverse background knowledge of physics and mathematics, but they all have a common desire to improve their knowledge of the physics that underlies the application of ionizing radiation in diagnosis and treatment of disease.

Ervin B. Podgorsak was born in Vienna, Austria and grew up in Ljubljana, Slovenia where he completed his undergraduate studies in technical physics at the University of Ljubljana in 1968. He then studied at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, USA and obtained M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics. He completed his post-doctoral studies in medical physics at the University of Toronto in 1974 and moved to McGill University in Montreal, where he currently holds positions of Professor of Medical Physics and Director of the Medical Physics department.