Description

PREFACE

This book is intended as an assistant textbook in radiation physics and its applications
in diagnostic radiological techniques in applied academic medical graduate programs.
The book may also be of interest for the large number of professional physicists, who
in their daily occupations deal with medical physics and have a need to improve their
understanding of radiation physics and to all medical postgraduate programs.
Medical physics is a rapidly developing specialty of physics, concerned with the
application of 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 medical imaging residents and
technology students in diagnostic imaging and therapeutic radiation oncology, students
in biomedical engineering, and students in radiation safety and radiation dosimeter
educational programs. All these professionals have a common desire to improve their
knowledge of the physics that underlies the application of radiation in diagnosis and
treatment of disease. Candidates preparing for professional certification exams in any
of the medical imaging and medical radiation related medical specialties should find
the material useful. The intent of this book is to provide the missing link between the
elementary physics and the physics of the medical imaging subspecialties.
This book is based on notes that we developed over the past years of teaching
radiation physics to students in radiological techniques department at the college of
health and medical technology. It contains eleven chapters, each chapter covering a
specific group of subjects related to radiation physics that form the basic knowledge
required from professionals working in different medical imaging fields.
We greatly appreciate to our colleagues in the radiological techniques department at
the health and medical technology college for their encouragement, approval and
tolerance of our concentrating on the book during the past year.
Finally, we gratefully acknowledge that the completion of this book could not have
been accomplished without the support and encouragement of our families.

Dr. Mahmood Radhi Alqurayshi Dr. Haider Qasim Almosawi

Baghdad December, 2014