Brief Outline of the Development of Medical Physics

This chapter presents the most important stages of the history of the development of Medical Physics starting from the Ancient Era, continuing the the Middle Ages, and ending in the last three and a half centuries, when the differentiation of various sciences began. A special attention is also paid to the formation of the Kyiv School of Medical Physics at the St. Volodymyr Kiev University and at the Bogomolets Kiev Medical Institute (National Medical University) in the period from 1841 to the present time. The importance of Medical Physics, as an integral part of the medical science, medical education and medical industry, is emphasized. It is these directions of science, education and technology that provided a reliable basis to create precision and high-tech medical equipment for diagnostics and treatment. Medical Physics began to develop especially actively starting from the second half of the 20th century, when such medical diagnostic methods as X-ray computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and its practical implementation became possible. It should be noted that these outstanding achievements of physics in medicine were awarded the Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine in 1979 and 2003. There are two approaches to teaching the discipline “Medical Physics” in medical educational and scientific institutions of different countries of the world, The first of them is related to the teaching of Medical Physics, which includes a broad applications of physics in medicine, namely biomechanics and hemodynamics; electrodynamics and electronic medical equipment; molecular biophysics and biophysics of complex living systems; optical and quantum-mechanical methods of studying biomedical systems, as well as elements of radiation medicine. The second approach in teaching Medical Physics in a relatively narrower sense is related to the use of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation in Radiation Oncology and Nuclear Medicine. This chapter, and this book as a whole, takes a broader approach, although the Chaps. 6 and 7 touches on a number of problems in the use of tomographic methods of quantum mechanics in medicine, as well as selected problems in radiation medicine.