Clinical Service and Consultation
Medical physicists are heavily involved with the patient treatment. One important example is the planning of radiation treatments for cancer patients, using either external radiation beams or internal radioactive sources. An indispensable service is the accurate measurement of the radiation output from radiation sources employed in cancer therapy. Other important services are rendered through investigation of equipment perforÂmance, organization of quality control in radiation therapy, design of radiation installations, and control of radiation hazards. The medical physicist is called upon to contribute clinical and scientific advice and resources to solve the numerous and diverse physical problems that arise continually in many specialized medical areas.
Research and Development
Medical physicists play a vital and often leading role on the medical research team. Medical physicists' activities cover wide frontiers, including such key areas as cancer and images. In cancer, medical physicists work primarily on issues involving radiation, such as the basic mechanisms of biological change after irradiation, the application of new high-energy machines to patient treatment, and the development of new techniques for precise measurement of radiation.
Teaching
Most medical physicists have faculty appointments at universities, where the physicists help train future medical physicists, medical dosimetrist, resident physicians, medical students, and technologists who operate the various types of equipment used to perform treatment. The medical physicists also conduct courses in medical physics and aspects of biophysics and radiobiology for a variety of graduÂate and undergraduate students.
