PHOTON SCATTERING - A NEW SOURCE OF INFORMATION IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY

Scattering has often been regarded as a problem in all aspects of medical radiation physics. The contribution of scatter to radiotherapy beams causing increased penumbra, the production of staff doses during diagnostic X-ray procedures or the contribution of scatter to image degradation in radiology have all been cited. More recently the scattering of photons has been studied to a degree that one has been able to understand these problems better and in some cases one has solutions for them. Furthermore, from these investigations it has been realized that applications usefully exploiting the scattering process can be found in medical radiation studies. Clearly, it is time to look again at the scattered photon but this time with a little more respect for its usefulness.