ABSTRACT
S ince the 18th century, and still today, progress in healthcare is mainlybased on achievements in science and engineering. In particular, with thediscovery of radioactivity and X-rays, the application of ionizing radiation in medicine initiated numerous physical and technical developments to significantly improve diagnosis of nearly all diseases, and to provide effective and cost-efficient methods in cancer treatment. With the technical revolution in medicine, the role of physicists and engineers became ever more prominent and paved the way towards new scientific fields in medicine such as radiology, radiotherapy and nuclear medicine, and, most importantly, medical physics and biomedical engineering.
