Talking about a revolution: X-ray vision then and now

Silvia Pani, University of Surrey

7:30 for 8:00 start

The discovery of X-rays in 1895 started a revolution in the way clinicians looked at the human body: until then, the only way to look inside a body was to open it.

Other imaging modalities followed rapidly in the following century, with ever-increasing capability for diagnosing illnesses and understanding the functioning of the human body.

However, X-ray imaging is far from being an elderly gentleman amongst more successful youngsters, and it still has much to say and to contribute.

This talk will present the historical developments of X-ray imaging, and address the current imaging challenges as well as the developments that make X-rays still an evergreen.

Silvia Pani is a lecturer in Applied radiation physics at the University of Surrey. She has been working in the field of X-ray imaging since 1996 and has been part of the team that developed the world-first synchrotron beamline dedicated to mammography.

Since then, she has been working on the development of accessible techniques for improved breast diagnosis and security scanning, and on training the next generations of applied physicists. She has published over 70 papers on the subject of X-ray imaging.