With every advancement in science and technology, there have been curious minds trying to apply the knowledge learnt to the human body; attempting to understand the hidden secrets of nature. The following is a brief timeline of these significant milestones, that have helped shape medical physics that we know and love today:
| Year | Innovator | Milestone |
|---|---|---|
| 1600 | Egyptians | The treatment of abscesses using a fire drill, is described in the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus. |
| 480 | Hippocrates | Wrote about the use of thermography. In his day, mud was spread over the patient’s affected areas. The parts that dried first were thought to indicate underlying organ pathology. |
| Year | Innovator | Milestone |
|---|---|---|
| 965 | Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) | Specialised on optics, especially the physics of vision and helped to greatly move the scientific movement forward at the time. |
| 1508 | Leonardo da Vinci | Discovered the principle of the contact lens. One of the world’s first medical physicists, he was fascinated by biomechanics. |
| 1611 | Santorio Santorius | Created the first clinical thermometer. |
| 1673 | Antonie van Leeuwenhoek | Invented the microscope. |
| 1680 | Giovanni Borelli | Related animals to machines and used mathematics to prove his theories. He is regarded as one of the founding fathers of biomechanics. |
| 1780 | Luigi Galvani | Showed that a frog’s legs twitch when placed in a circuit with 2 dissimilar tools. He realised that this was a form of ‘animal electricity’ from the muscle. |
| 1799 | Alessandro Volta | Invented the battery and founded the basis of electrochemistry. He discovered this by taking Luigi’s work one step forward by demonstrating that a brine-soaked cloth could be used instead of a frog’s legs. |
| 1836 | René Laennac | Created the stethoscope. |
| 1835 | Michael Faraday | Contributed significantly to the field of electromagnetism and started to lecture physics at St George’s university. |
| 1850 | Hermann von Helmholtz | Inventor of the ophthalmoscope, to inspect the retina and other parts of the eye. |
| 1890 | Professor Reinold | In this decade physics became compulsory in UK undergraduate medicine. Academic physics departments were established in medical schools across the country with, Prof. Reinold being the first lecturer of Physics at Guy’s Hospital. |
| 1895 | Wilhelm Roentgen | Discovery of x-rays and circulates famous image of wife’s hand. |
| 1896 | Henri Becquerel | Discovered radioactivity but also experiences an adverse effect two years later where he receive’s a burn from a piece of radium in his pocket, taking several months to heal. |
| 1896 | Thomas Edison | Reports eye injuries from x-rays with further symptom reports from others later on in the year including hair loss, reddened skin, skin sloughing off, and lesions. |
| 1898 | Wilhelm Roentgen | Committee of the Roentgen Society on x-ray dosage is established due to the adverse effects and injuries caused by x-rays. |
| 1901 | Henri-Alexandre Danlos | Treats lupus using radium brachytherapy, which involves implanting radioactive materials directly into the affected tissue |
| 1903 | George H. Stover | First radium treatment of skin cancer, he experimented on himself but sadly died early due to excessive radiation exposure. |
| 1904 | Clarence Dally | First person to have reportedly died as a result of x-ray exposure. |
| 1910 | - | Treatment of ringworm arises, extending its applications to the treatment of acne, skin cancers and fungal infections. |
| 1913 | - | Baltimore introduces radium teletherapy, now the most common form of radiotherapy where ionising radiation is pointed at the affected area of interest. |
| 1919 | Sidney Russ | Builds a teletherapy machine at Middlesex Hospital using 2.5g radium left over from the great war. It has deeper penetration than x-rays and a better depth dose than radium packs. |
| 1923 | Dr Alfred Henry Fuson | Killed after falling from a roof during radio experiments. |
| 1930 | - | First megavoltage x-ray system at MGH and Barts . |
| 1934 | Paterson & Parker | ‘Manchester System’. |
| 1942 | - | Cyclotron-produced iodine-131 is used for treatment of hyperthyroidism, four years later it is also introduced as a treatment for thyroid cancer. |
| 1946 | Mayneord & Mitchell | Cobalt-60 therapy |
| 1949 | Harold Johns | Betatron is invented, a device which accelerates electrons in a circular path by magnetic induction. |
| 1950 | - | Medical Ultrasound |
| 1951 | William Mayneord | Rectilinear scanner, an imaging device to capture emission from readiopharmaceuticals in nuclear medicine. |
| 1953 | - | First linear accelerator is established in Hammersmith. |
| 1960 | Anger | Gamma camera. |
| 1964 | - | Technetium-99m is established as the tracer of choice. |
| 1973 | Hounsfield | Computed Tomography (CT). |
| 1973 | Lauterbaur & Mansfield | Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). |
| 1975 | - | Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is created. |
| 2000 | - | Multimodality Imaging. |
An interesting point to note is that physicists are not involved in clinical use, because as soon as a medical instrument/device is applied it becomes a doctors field and expertise
At the start of the twentieth century hospital physicists were mainly employed in radiotherapy and radiation protection. In the UK during 1932, only 10 - 12 hospital physicists existed and now this has grown to over 1500 physicists in 2010.
The reason for this exponential growth in numbers is the rapid advancement in new imaging and clinical measurement techniques briefly discussed above. As a result various bodies have been founded:
In 2000, medical physicists and clinical engineers were regulated as ‘clinical scientists’, and became a fully-fledged healthcare profession.
With the quick progression of medical physics a lot of new areas have arisen, and now medical physicists have a large range of responsibilities ranging from a more physics based to a more engineering based:
| Increased physics content |
| Radiotherapy physics |
| Radiation protection |
| Diagnostic radiology |
| Nuclear medicine |
| Magnetic resonance imaging |
| Ultrasound |
| Non-ionising radiation |
| Physiological measurement |
| Biomechanics |
| Medical electronics |
| Assistive technology |
| Medical engineering design |
| Medical equipment management |
| Increased engineering content |
Radiotherapy is the treatment of disease (usually cancer) using very high doses of X-ray or particle radiation. The particular role medical physics plays is to:
Medical physics also has a large involvement in imaging using x-rays and computed tomography:
In nuclear medicine, radioactive materials can be used to obtain images of tissue function, or in larger quantities, to treat disease. With medical physics helping to:
MRI is structural and functional imaging using magnetic fields and radio waves instead of ionising radiation. The particular role medical physics plays is to:
Clinical engineering focus on:
Medical physicists can also dedicate their time to research and development:
Some other areas of medical physics include ultrasound, radiation protection, lasers and optical imaging.
There are three main fields that medical physics and clinical engineering can take you into:
Most large hospitals have a ‘Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering’ department. You need:
There are over 30 UK universities active in medical physics/engineering research, many with international reputations. You need:
Many leading companies have large UK facilities, and there are many specialist UK companies with innovations, for example in lasers, ultrasound and medical devices.