The Role of the Medical Physicist in the Imaging Department

Medical imaging (MI) incorporates a large number of different imaging modalities such as X-ray radiography and fluoroscopy machines, mammography and angiography systems, Computed Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), or Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scanners, etc. Obviously, MI plays a very important role in improving public health around the world. For all the above reasons, MI quality needs exponentially rise.

Many of the machines used in MI pose no risk to the patient, whereas others involve high patient radiation dose. Examples are CT, PET, or the angiography systems. Specifically for CT, depending on clinical needs and technical protocols, patient radiation dose can easily differ substantially, even for the same anatomical region, clinical indication, technical protocol or even for the same CT unit. The same can be seen in angiography, especially in therapeutic interventional techniques such as percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), catheter-based structural heart interventions, electrophysiologic studies or arrhythmia ablations. In these cases apart from image quality the need to balance radiation or other risks with image quality is urgently needed.

Medical physicists are health care professionals with specialized training in the medical applications of physics. They are highly skilled scientists that can address all the above issues in an efficient manner. Examples of other parts of their every day clinical work can be a radiation protection and radiation safety service, scientific and technical consultancy on the design of radiation facilities, or the safe handling, storage and disposal of radioactive materials, specification, procurement and acceptance testing of complex and expensive medical equipment, etc.