• Question: How does the machines that you most commonly use in your line of work, work in terms of the physics related science?

    Asked by Le Chat Noir to Clare, Glafkos, Paul, Samantha on 9 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Glafkos Havariyoun

      Glafkos Havariyoun answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      Salut! Bonne question!

      There is a LOT of physics involved in each of the machines we use!

      ONE of the basic physics related science that we use in Nuclear Medicine is excitations and ionisations .Have you heard of them ?

    • Photo: Clare Devery

      Clare Devery answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      Hi! I work with MRI scanners. They use a magnetic field and radiofrequency waves to take images of different parts of the body. With an MRI image, what you are essentially looking at is a picture of all of the water molecules in the body. The body is made mostly of water, that is why it works so well! The magnetic field influences the water molecules so that they all line up the same way. Then radiofrequency pulses are used to change this alignment and it is this disturbance that is used to generate the images.

    • Photo: Paul Booker

      Paul Booker answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      In radiotherapy the most common machine is a medical linear accelerator (linac for short). These are used to accelerate electrons to very high speeds, so that they can get deep inside a person to damage and kill their cancer cells. It uses loads of physics! For example there is an electron gun to get the electrons from in the first place, a bit like a fancy light bulb as you heat a filament then direct all the electrons that come off in one direction. To get really high energies linacs use the same technology as you find in a microwave, so it generates a high power radio wave for the electrons to ‘ride’ on to get them up to the correct speed. There’s loads more, whole textbooks about this!

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      I also work in MRI. The physics we use is using radio waves to excite atoms and also use radio waves to pick up signals from the body.

    • Photo: Samantha Terry

      Samantha Terry answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      I work with PET and SPECT. The physics we use requires the emission of either gamma photon directly during decay of isotopes or the decay into positrons which annihilate (i.e. bump into each other) to make more gammas that are emitted at 180 degrees from each other.

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