The first Marvel superhero that we are going to present you is certainly one of the most famous and well-known… It is the Amazing Spider-Man, created in 1963 by Stan Lee, considered as a sort of the father of Marvel superheroes, and Steve Ditko, who took care of writing and drawing the initial stories for the first 38 issues of the Amazing Spider-Man comics.
The young high school student Peter Parker attends, along with all of his classmates, a laboratory experiment; in here a large electrified tube is in use, emitting- most likely- mysterious X-rays. At that moment, a tiny spider climbs down from the ceiling, it crosses the radiation flow and, as fate wills, it bites the hand of the unfortunate, at least until then, bespectacled student. This would have granted him the notorious spider powers, such as sticking to the walls and the ability to perceive dangers. A true Spider-sense …
But let’s see in actuality what these mysterious X-rays are and in particular how they are applied to medicine field and to the profession of the medical physics specialist.
X-rays were discovered almost by chance by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in 1895. These mysterious rays emerge from the cathode ray tubes, applying them a high electrical voltage; they are able to expose photographic films, and generate images that allow seeing inside a human body.
It was a great discovery for medicine, one that earned Roentgen the first-ever Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 and that allowed the development of all the radiological equipment, starting from the very first machines that were used during the 1st World War for the diagnosis of soldiers wounded in battles, up to 1975 when the Computerized Axial Tomography was discovered and is now known to all people by the name of CT scan.
We are at the dawn of modern Imaging Radiodiagnostics, one of the hospital sectors where we Medical Physicists work. In collaboration with Radiologists and Technicians, we guarantee a quality assurance program on the most modern and sophisticated equipment used for cancer-related diagnosis and research. The evaluation and optimization of radiation exposure and dose reduction in patients, especially pediatric ones and pregnant women, are some of the fundamental activities of the medical physicist in radiodiagnostics.
