Handbook of Radiotherapy Physics: Theory and Practice PDF

PREFACE

Radiotherapy is a comprehensive and fast-moving discipline which plays a major role in cancer care. Safe and effective radiotherapy requires close collaboration between radiation oncologists, radiation technologists and medical physicists, and all must have an understanding of each others' disciplines. Our aim has been to provide a comprehensive text providing most of the theoretical and practical knowledge that medical physicists need to know, including the essential underlying radiation biology. Although principally aimed at practising medical physicists, this book will also be useful to all other professionals involved in radiation therapy, whether they be students (master's and PhD level), university teachers, researchers, radiation oncologists, or radiation technologists.

The book is organised into 13 Parts, each dealing with a major self-contained subject area. Each part begins with an introduction by the editors and is subdivided into chapters mostly written by a single author. References are collected together at the end of each part. In order to cover in detail all aspects of radiotherapy physics and biology, a high level of expertise was required. Contributions have been brought together from eminent specialists in the field, mostly from Europe, but also some from North America. The editors have, where necessary, combined contributions from different authors in order to provide a logical flow—as far as possible details of who wrote what are shown on the title page of each chapter.

Parts A through C provide the fundamentals of the underlying physics, radiobiology and technology respectively. Parts D through H provide the practical information needed to support external-beam radiotherapy: dose measurements, properties of clinical beams, patient dose computation, treatment planning and quality assurance. An appendix to Part D gives complementary details to enable a thorough understanding of the methods and data used for absolute dose measurement. Part I seeks to capture the exciting new developments in the subject including those in particle therapy, thus providing a basis for the reader to understand the ever expanding literature in this area. Parts J and K deal with brachytherapy using sealed and unsealed sources respectively. The framework of radiation protection is covered in Part L including an appendix describing the detailed application of UK legislation. Part M contains useful tables of physical constants, and electron and photon interaction data.

In a multi-author book of this length there will inevitably be a certain unevenness of style and level of detail and also some repetition; we see this as a strength rather than a weakness although we as editors have sought to ensure consistency. We wish to thank our many authors for their high-class contributions and not least for their patience during the time it has taken to bring together this work. It is unavoidable that some chapters are even more up-to-the-minute than others which were written more promptly. We would also like to thank Don Chapman and Helen Mayles who have read and commented on some of the chapters.

Finally, we have tried to make the content as international as possible by taking into account different practices and terminology in different parts of the world. For example we have used the words Radiation Oncologist and Radiation Technologist to describe the medical staff who prescribe radiotherapy and who operate the treatment machines respectively. Colleagues who carry out computer planning are referred to as Dosimetrists.

It is our hope that our readers will learn as much from reading this book as we have from editing it.