Since the first conference in 1966, there has been an enormous change, qualitatively as well as quantitatively in the application of computers in the field of radiotherapy. The fast technical development has made applications possible that only a few people dreamed of two decades ago. There is now hardly any field in radiotherapy where computers have no task. This book is a collection of papers dealing with all aspects of the use of computers in radiation therapy. It contains contributions by the majority of international scientists working in this field and thus presents a fair account of the state-of-the-art. It is felt that a useful application of computers in radiotherapy is only possible by close co-operation of all disciplines involved. New applications of computer software and hardware on the computation, imaging, process control and quality assurance of radiation treatments are discussed, as are new developments in radiation dose calculation models and experimental verifications. Development of dose calculation algorithms is still held to be of importance as can be judged from the fact that one third of the papers are on this topic.
