The increasing trend on the use of medical diagnostic x-ray is inevitable as millions of worldwide procedures are performed annually. In Indonesia, the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Agency had issued more than 7000 licenses for medical diagnostic x-ray devices up to 2017, and the annual number of new license application is expected to grow. While the public is an obvious beneficiary of this increased access to better healthcare, stakeholders like national authorities, clinicians, technicians, and scientists are more subjected into a situation in which their roles and significance are tested.

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Many current techniques require not only experience to perform, but also deep knowledge on the scientific background of the procedure as well as clinical consequences they bring. In this digital era, the ease, comfort, and practicability of medical x-ray imaging is unchallenged. Thanks to digital images storable in clouds, our technologists are no longer in need to deal with space-consuming stacks of x-ray images in hardcopies. Thanks to the networking system, films are no longer being transported in trolleys across corridors. And thanks to digital printers, many darkrooms has been converted into usable space to improve space efficiency. In short, many are made happy with these digital revolution; but as scientists, medical physicists are experiencing rather a different ambience—a great challenge indeed. In addition, economic advancement in developing nations allows digital imaging system in medicine to gain popularity with such impulse that medical physicists need to accelerate in order to keep themselves updated.

 

Different physical characteristics between manufacturers presents difficulty to the physicists and overwhelm them. Diagnostic medical physicists, whose primary duty is to ensure the quality and safety of any devices involved, are now also tasked to deal with complexly varied digital algorithms of images, breadth of different physical characteristics, and dose-response curves in need of special attention. With abundance in number due to popularity, the digital planar x-ray imaging systems with computed radiography and digital flat-panel image receptors deserve attention to ensure that adequate, diagnostic-quality images are produced with minimum radiation dose to the patients—that is, being optimized.

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More complexity follows with other modalities employing digital technologies. CT scanners are now dominated by multidetector configurations allowing wide-beam scanning to be used—one that requires special attention on the radiation dosimetry. Breast imaging are now getting popular with tomosynthesis volumetric imaging, presenting challenges to the physicists regarding dosimetry and quality control methods. In angiography, volumetric imaging under the term of three-dimensional rotational angiography had left physicists struggling with novel dosimetry methods and image quality evaluation. Hybrid imaging systems with radiotherapy and nuclear medicine applications, are getting far more common as the walls between medical physics sub-specialties begin to fall. In short, it genuinely requires deep knowledge in physical characteristics on the recent technologies to enable medical physicists to master the situation and secure their significance.

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To help diagnostic medical physicists to improve their capacity in playing their role, we propose an educational course in Imaging Physics to be held on October 04-07, 2018. This workshop allows professionals in diagnostic imaging, particularly diagnostic imaging medical physicists, to update their knowledge on advanced, cutting-edge technologies coming to their workplaces. Clinical and regulatory perspectives are also given in the workshop to enlighten the community on the demand their professions is expected to fulfill.

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The proposed workshop is a collaboration between Department of Physics (through Medical Physics and Biophysics division), Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesian Association of Physicists in Medicine, and Dr. Cheng B. Saw, Director of Medical Physics at Northeast Radiation Oncology Centers, Dunmore, Pennsylvania, USA, as representative from American Association of Physicists in Medicine. The topics are chosen by our local committee in order to provide the know-how of local needs.