Millions of Americans every year depend upon medical imaging exams to diagnose disease and detect injury, and thousands more rely on radiation therapy to treat and cure their cancers.
I was the Chair of the first department of medical physics in a medical school in the U.S.
Most medical physicists work in the physics of radiation oncology making sure that the desired dose is given to the cancer and the dose to normal tissues are minimized.
Medical physics is an applied area of physics.
Radiation is relentless: my protocol is five days a week, 33 sessions altogether.
At Mass General in January 2007, Dr. Loeffler's team attached a ring-shaped metal frame to my head with four pins. Then I went to the radiation center, where they strapped me to the treatment table and secured the head frame so that I couldn't move.
Chemo gets all the notoriety, but for me, radiation was really the tough one.
When I entered medical physics in 1958 there were fewer than 100 in the U.S. and I could see many opportunities to apply my knowledge of nuclear physics.
In the past, radiation treatment planning has been a very lengthy procedure. Now, with the aid of CT therapy-planning computer programs, we can position the therapy beams automatically with precision in a few minutes.
In some cases radiation reduces the incidence of cancer.
