IONIZING RADIATION IN MEDICINE

IONISING RADIATION IN MEDICINEThis is clearly a big topic which I can hardly do justice to in such a short time. Nevertheless I think we could start by trying to define or explain what one means by ionizing radiation. RADIATION is a term used in physics to denote any form of energy that can be propagated through space — sometimes a material medium is required for the propagation as, for example, in the case of sound. However, most forms of radiation are capable of travelling through free space. All “free-space” are classifiable as CORPUSCULAR with atomic particles. One of the most important and certainly the most familiar forms of radiation is electromagnetic. This is radiated by matter whenever electric charges (usually electrons) are accelerated. The accelerations of the charges may result purely from the motions associated with the temperature of the material, in which case the radiation is said to be thermal, or they may be due to specific processes, such as electrical discharge, high frequency alternating currents, etc.