100 years of medical x-rays in Birmingham by Dr Geoff Hayes, hosted by IOP West Midlands

100 years of medical x-rays in Birmingham: How radiation has transformed healthcare by Dr Geoff Hayes, Deputy Head of Radiotherapy Physics, University Hospitals Birmingham. Hosted by IOP West Midlands, Birmingham Centre.
The talk will start by exploring the work of John Hall-Edwards, a Birmingham pioneer who is credited with the first medical x-ray in 1896. The talk then goes through the history and development of medical x-rays- from the early diagnostic work to the introduction of accelerators to generate x-rays for radiotherapy. We’ll look at the advances in technology to the present day, and how radiation is able to treat cancers with ever increasing accuracy. We’ll finish with a view of future advances and how combining new therapies offers hope to patients with advanced disease.
About the Speaker
Geoff read physics at Durham University, graduating in 1999 before moving to Birmingham, completing his PhD in Physics from the University of Birmingham; examining the potential of different energies of x-rays to induce cancers in a human cell line. His experiments involved using a clinical accelerator at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham to simulate the x-ray spectra from an atomic bomb. After his PhD, Geoff worked as medical physicist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham- specialising in radiotherapy. In 2022 he was appointed as the head of radiotherapy treatment planning, and deputy head of radiotherapy physics.