1: Radiation and Interactions With Matter

This is the most fundamental of all the topics in Radiation Oncology. It is critical to all other topics in physics, as well as some in radiobiology. The basic concepts are:

  • What is an atom, and what is it made of?
  • What are electrons and photons?
  • What happens when these particles interact?

These concepts are described in the topics below.

Further information can be found in Chapter 1 of Podgorsak, chapters 1, 4, 5, and 14 in Khan, and often in the first chapter of large radiotherapy tomes.

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