Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients." The aim of EBM is to integrate the experience of the clinician, the values of the patient, and the best available scientific information to guide decision-making about clinical management. The term was originally used to describe an approach to teaching the practice of medicine and improving decisions by individual physicians about individual patients.
Radiography is an imaging technique using X-rays, gamma rays, or similar ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation to view the internal form of an object. Applications of radiography include medical and industrial radiography. Similar techniques are used in airport security,. To create an image in conventional radiography, a beam of X-rays is produced by an X-ray generator and it is projected towards the object. A certain amount of the X-rays or other radiation are absorbed by the object, dependent on the object's density and structural composition. The X-rays that pass through the object are captured behind the object by a detector. The generation of flat two-dimensional images by this technique is called projectional radiography. In computed tomography, an X-ray source and its associated detectors rotate around the subject, which itself moves through the conical X-ray beam produced. Any given point within the subject is crossed from many directions by many different beams at different times. Information regarding the attenuation of these beams is collated and subjected to computation to generate two-dimensional images on three planes which can be further processed to produce a three-dimensional image.
Medical physics deals with the application of the concepts and methods of physics to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases with a specific goal of improving human health and well-being. Since 2008, medical physics has been included as a health profession according to International Standard Classification of Occupation of the International Labour Organization.
A medical physicist is a health professional with specialist education and training in the concepts and techniques of applying physics in medicine and competent to practice independently in one or more of the subfields (specialties) of medical physics. A medical physicist plays a fundamental role in applying physics to medicine, but particularly in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The scientific and technological progress in medical physics has led to a variety of skills that must be integrated into the role of a medical physicist in order for them to perform their job. The "medical services" provided to patients undergoing diagnostic and therapeutic treatments must, therefore, be the result of different but complementary skills. In general, the medical physicist is responsible for all scientific and technical aspects of imaging, radiation treatment, and radiation safety. It is their occupational role to ensure that medical modalities offered to patients are met with the utmost quality assurance. It is the medical physicist that manage and supervise the efforts of dosimetrists, therapists and technologists in that capacity.
Walter Mauderli DSc was a pioneer in the development of the field of medical physics. He earned his doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology under the instruction of notable physicists as Nobel Laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli.
Willi A. Kalender is a German medical physicist and professor and former chairman of the Institute of Medical Physics of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Kalender has produced several new technologies in the field of diagnostic radiology imaging.
The Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM) is the United Kingdom's professional body and learned society for physicists, engineers and technologists within the field of medicine, founded in 1995, changing its name from the Institution of Physics and Engineering in Medicine and Biology (IPEMB) in 1997. The Institute is governed by an elected Board of Trustees reporting to which are the Science, Research and Innovation Council and the Professional and Standards Council. The councils have operational responsibility for scientific and professional aspects of the Institute's work, respectively. Beneath the councils is a substructure of committees, groups and panels of members, which undertake the work of the Institute.
The Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB) was founded in 1969 as the Biofeedback Research Society (BRS). The association aims to promote understanding of biofeedback and advance the methods used in this practice. AAPB is a non-profit organization as defined in Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Service Code.
The Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine (ACPSEM) is a professional organisation for medical physicists, biomedical engineers and allied professionals in Australia and New Zealand. The ACPSEM was first incorporated in 1977 as the Australasian College of Physical Scientists in Medicine. The college was formed from the earlier Australian Regional Group of the Hospital Physicists Association (UK), Biophysics Group of the Australian Institute of Physics and New Zealand Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering Association. The college was admitted to membership of the International Organization for Medical Physics in 1986.
The American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (AAPM&R) is the national medical specialty society in the United States for physicians who specialize in physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R). These physicians are called "physiatrists" or "rehabilitation physicians". Founded in 1938, AAPM&R also offers education, advocates for PM&R, and promotes PM&R research.
South East Asian Federation of Organizations for Medical Physics (SEAFOMP) was officially formed when it was accepted as a regional chapter of the International Organization for Medical Physics (IOMP) at the World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, held in Chicago, Illinois, in 2000.
The Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation is the official journal of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM). The journal is published monthly by Elsevier and is the most highly cited journal in the Rehabilitation category of the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports. The 2018 Impact Factor was 2.697.
The American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) is an organization of rehabilitation professionals dedicated to serving people with disabling conditions by supporting research that promotes health, independence, productivity, and quality of life; and meets the needs of rehabilitation clinicians and people with disabilities.
Wolfgang Axel Tomé is a physicist working in medicine as a researcher, inventor, and educator. He is noted for his contributions to the use of photogrammetry in high precision radiation therapy; his work on risk adaptive radiation therapy which is based on the risk level for recurrence in tumor sub-volumes using biological objective functions; and the development of hippocampal avoidant cranial radiation therapy techniques to alleviate hippocampal-dependent neurocognitive impairment following cranial irradiation.
The American Academy of Health Physics (AAHP) is a non-profit organization based in McLean, VA which serves to advance the profession of health physics through networking opportunities for members, certification of health physicists, and advisement to professionals to increase the application of health physics. The Academy has selective criteria for membership in the organization.
Xie George Xu was the Edward E. Hood Chair Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, New York, United States, before he relocated in 2020 to China and joined the faculty of the University of Science and Technology of China.
John Robert Cunningham, was a Canadian medical physicist who was noted for his contributions in the development of computerized radiation treatment planning dose calculations in radiation therapy.
The European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics (EFOMP) was founded in May 1980 in London to serve as an umbrella organisation representing the national Medical Physics societies in Europe. The office moved to Utrecht in January 2021. It is a non-profit organisation and aims to foster and coordinate the activities of its national member organisations, encourage exchange and dissemination of professional and scientific information, develop guidelines for education, training and accreditation programmes and to make recommendations on the responsibilities, organisational relationships and roles of medical physicists.
Caridad Borrás is a Spanish medical physicist. Her career started in 1964 at the Santa Creu i Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona. From 1988 to 2000, she was Regional Advisor of the Radiological Health Program and, from 2000 to 2002, Coordinator of Essential Drugs and Technology at the Pan American Health Organization in Washington D.C.
