Loredana Marcu, Eva Bezak (eds): Recent advances and research updates, medical physics and radiobiology

摘要

Much of what is widely perceived as new technology has in fact been in existence since the 1980s. Arc therapy, SRS, PET, MRI, EPI and particle therapy have all been in use for decades, as noted by Thwaites and Julian Malicki [ I ] in a recent editorial. The corollary of this is that highly con-formal treatments have been possible for a long time, but the clinical implementation was not particularly practical. Current radiotherapy is much improved compared to that of the 1980s, thanks to the increased precision, accuracy, reliability, efficiency and automation of the technology, and better knowledge of how to use it. So what exactly has changed? This book describes it well, with many chapters giving a potted history of each topic and a detailed description of the state of the art and expectations for the future. Its scope is not limited to technology, going beyond the traditional medical physics into areas such as molecular targeting.