External links
- Steve Webb publications indexed by Google Scholar
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Steve Webb | |
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| Born | Steven Webb |
| Awards | EFOMP Medal, Barclay Medal |
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| Fields | Medical physics |
| Institutions | Institute of Cancer Research, Royal Marsden Hospital |
Steve Webb (born 26 November 1948) is a British medical physicist and writer. He is an emeritus professor of physics at the Joint Department of Physics in the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital. [1] He was editor-in-chief of Physics in Medicine and Biology for six years, being succeeded in 2011 by Simon Cherry. [2]
Steve Webb was born and grew up at Swindon in Wiltshire. He studied at Imperial College London, where he was awarded a BSc in 1970 and a PhD in 1973. The subject of his doctoral studies was cosmic-ray physics. [3]
Webb's former colleague Robert Speller, who later became head of radiation physics at University College London, had moved into the field of medical physics. This encouraged Webb to consider a career in the same field and, after consultations with his friend, he applied for a job at the Royal Marsden Hospital. Early on he worked in the field of CT. Webb and his colleagues built a CT scanner by cannibalizing a radioisotope scanner. He then moved on to research in nuclear medicine, with one of the hospital's first PET scanners (named MUPPET) housed in a freight container on a lorry in the car park. [3]
Arguably, Webb's most important work was on radiation therapy and included treatment planning and intensity-modulated and image-guided radiotherapies. In 1989 Webb published an important paper on radiotherapy treatment planning (Phys. Med. Biol. 34 1349) and went on to publish more than 150 papers on radiotherapy. [3]
In 1996 Webb was granted a professorship at the Royal Marsden and two years later he became head of the Joint Department of Physics. As Editor-in-Chief of the journal Physics in Medicine and Biology , Webb has been the journal's most published author. [3]
Webb retired in September 2011.[ citation needed ]
Webb has been awarded the EFOMP Medal by the European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics, [4] the Barclay Medal by the British Institute of Radiology, [5] an Honorary Fellowship of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, [6] and honorary membership in the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Physik e.V., the German Society for Medical Physics. [7] In addition, he was awarded the degree of DSc (Med) Honoris Causa by the University of London.
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Radiation therapy or radiotherapy, often abbreviated RT, RTx, or XRT, is a therapy using ionizing radiation, generally provided as part of cancer treatment to control or kill malignant cells and normally delivered by a linear accelerator. Radiation therapy may be curative in a number of types of cancer if they are localized to one area of the body. It may also be used as part of adjuvant therapy, to prevent tumor recurrence after surgery to remove a primary malignant tumor. Radiation therapy is synergistic with chemotherapy, and has been used before, during, and after chemotherapy in susceptible cancers. The subspecialty of oncology concerned with radiotherapy is called radiation oncology. A physician who practices in this subspecialty is a radiation oncologist.
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.
Superficial X-rays are low-energy X-rays that do not penetrate very far before they are absorbed. They are produced by X-ray tubes operating at voltages in the 10–100 kV range, and therefore have peak energies in the 10–100 keV range. Precise naming and definitions of energy ranges may vary, and X-rays at the lower end of this range may also be known as Grenz rays. They are useful in radiation therapy for the treatment of various benign or malignant skin problems, including skin cancer and severe eczema. They have a useful depth of up to 5 mm. In some locations, orthovoltage treatment is being replaced by electron therapy or brachytherapy.
A radiation oncologist is a specialist physician who uses ionizing radiation in the treatment of cancer. Radiation oncology is one of the three primary specialties, the other two being surgical and medical oncology, involved in the treatment of cancer. Radiation can be given as a curative modality, either alone or in combination with surgery and/or chemotherapy. It may also be used palliatively, to relieve symptoms in patients with incurable cancers. A radiation oncologist may also use radiation to treat some benign diseases, including benign tumors. In some countries, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are controlled by a single oncologist who is a "clinical oncologist". Radiation oncologists work closely with other physicians such as surgical oncologists, interventional radiologists, internal medicine subspecialists, and medical oncologists, as well as medical physicists and technicians as part of the multi-disciplinary cancer team. Radiation oncologists undergo four years of oncology-specific training whereas oncologists who deliver chemotherapy have two years of additional training in cancer care during fellowship after internal medicine residency in the United States.
In medicine, proton therapy, or proton radiotherapy, is a type of particle therapy that uses a beam of protons to irradiate diseased tissue, most often to treat cancer. The chief advantage of proton therapy over other types of external beam radiotherapy is that the dose of protons is deposited over a narrow range of depth; hence in minimal entry, exit, or scattered radiation dose to healthy nearby tissues.
Radiographers, also known as radiologic technologists, diagnostic radiographers and medical radiation technologists are healthcare professionals who specialize in the imaging of human anatomy for the diagnosis and treatment of pathology. Radiographers are infrequently, and almost always erroneously, known as x-ray technicians. In countries that use the title radiologic technologist they are often informally referred to as techs in the clinical environment; this phrase has emerged in popular culture such as television programmes. The term radiographer can also refer to a therapeutic radiographer, also known as a radiation therapist.
Michel Matthew Ter-Pogossian was an American medical physicist. He was professor of radiology at the Washington University School of Medicine for over 30 years. A pioneer in nuclear medicine, he is best known for his research on the positron emission tomography (PET). He is considered one of its creators and often referred to as the "father of PET."
Fast neutron therapy utilizes high energy neutrons typically between 50 and 70 MeV to treat cancer. Most fast neutron therapy beams are produced by reactors, cyclotrons (d+Be) and linear accelerators. Neutron therapy is currently available in Germany, Russia, South Africa and the United States. In the United States, one treatment center is operational, in Seattle, Washington. The Seattle center uses a cyclotron which produces a proton beam impinging upon a beryllium target.
In radiotherapy, radiation treatment planning (RTP) is the process in which a team consisting of radiation oncologists, radiation therapist, medical physicists and medical dosimetrists plan the appropriate external beam radiotherapy or internal brachytherapy treatment technique for a patient with cancer.
Automatic Exposure Control (AEC) is an X-ray exposure termination device. A medical radiographic exposure is always initiated by a human operator but an AEC detector system may be used to terminate the exposure when a predetermined amount of radiation has been received. The intention of AEC is to provide consistent x-ray image exposure, whether to film, a digital detector or a CT scanner. AEC systems may also automatically set exposure factors such as the X-ray tube current and voltage in a CT.
Professor Dame Janet Elizabeth Husband is Emeritus Professor of Radiology at the Institute of Cancer Research. She had a career in diagnostic radiology that spanned nearly 40 years, using scanning technology to diagnose, stage, and follow-up cancer. She continues to support medicine and research as a board member and advisor for various organisations.
The computed tomography dose index (CTDI) is a commonly used radiation exposure index in X-ray computed tomography (CT), first defined in 1981. The unit of CTDI is the gray (Gy) and it can be used in conjunction with patient size to estimate the absorbed dose. The CTDI and absorbed dose may differ by more than a factor of two for small patients such as children.
Positron emission tomography–magnetic resonance imaging (PET–MRI) is a hybrid imaging technology that incorporates magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) soft tissue morphological imaging and positron emission tomography (PET) functional imaging.
The Society for Radiological Protection is the leading UK professional body promoting learning and skills in the field of Radiological Protection. The Society was formed in 1963, and received its Royal Charter in 2007. It has the overall objectives of improving public knowledge and maintaining professional standards in that field. It is the largest society of its kind in Europe, and second largest in the world.
Christopher M. Nutting is a British Professor of Clinical Oncology and medical consultant, specializing in head and neck cancers, who has helped develop Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT), an advanced form of Radiation therapy.
Madan M. Rehani is an Indian-born medical physicist.
Proton computed tomography (pCT), or proton CT, is an imaging modality first proposed by Cormack in 1963 and initial experiment explorations identified several advantages over conventional X-ray CT (xCT). However, particle interactions such as multiple Coulomb scattering (MCS) and (in)elastic nuclear scattering events deflect the proton trajectory, resulting in nonlinear paths which can only be approximated via statistical assumptions, leading to lower spatial resolution than X-ray tomography. Further experiments were largely abandoned until the advent of proton radiation therapy in the 1990s which renewed interest in the topic due to the potential benefits of imaging and treating patients with the same particle.
Heather Ann Williams is a British medical physicist working as a Consultant Medical Physicist for Nuclear Medicine at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust. She is also a lecturer in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at University of Manchester, as well as the University of Salford and University of Cumbria.
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.
A clinical technologist, also known as a healthcare science practitioner, is a medical professional involved in the practical delivery of medical physics and clinical engineering services. In some locations there is considerable overlap in closely related terms, for example in many countries technologist and radiographer are synonyms, while in the United Kingdom they are considered separate professions. Clinical technologists can be found in nuclear medicine, radiotherapy, radiation protection, and rehabilitation engineering departments, and they are often described by their scope of practice.
