Radiological Physics Team
Location: Royal Marsden, London
Section: Joint Department of Physics
We provide a radiological protection, X-ray quality assurance, an HSE approved personal dosimetry service and a calibration service for the Trust, the Royal Brompton Hospital and hospitals elsewhere.
During the year the group has focused on risk and hazard assessments, source security and ethics. Radiation protection shielding calculations and surveys have been provided for new diagnostic and therapeutic equipment.
Advances in X-ray equipment, such as digital units and multi-detector CT scanners, continue to expand the scope of our work.
Courses have been run for key staff concerned with brachytherapy, unsealed source therapy and radiotherapy. Training courses in radiation protection and the physics of X-ray imaging have been run for physicists in the UK and abroad.
Our research interests have focussed on patient dosimetry and image quality in X-ray imaging, the design of antiscatter grids and choice of X-ray spectra for digital mammographic receptors, and optimisation of patient dose and image quality, concentrating on paediatric CT, CT fluoroscopy and examinations using electron beam CT. Attention is now being drawn towards 3D imaging using planar imaging methods with a particular emphasis in mammography.
The group has continued to make important contributions to national and international protocols and codes of practice for patient dosimetry and quality control of X-ray equipment.
In the Joint Department of Physics
