Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2019) 134: 12
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2019-12484-6

Review

Nuclear interactions and medicine

¹ Dipartimento di Scienze di Base Applicate per l’Ingegneria, “Sapienza” Università di Roma, Roma, Italy
² INFN, Sezione di Roma1, Roma, Italy
³ INFN, Sezione di Milano, Milano, Italy

^* e-mail: vincenzo.patera@roma1.infn.it

Received: 5 June 2018
Accepted: 9 November 2018
Published online: 9 January 2019

Abstract

What does antimatter have to do with medical diagnosis? Why can nuclear decays be used to treat tumour? And how can the radiation emitted by the nuclei help doctors to discover our diseases? In modern medicine, science and technology are now a constant presence, even if it is often not evident to the patient–s eye. Nuclear physics is no less important and plays an important role both in the treatment and in the diagnosis. This paper will try to highlight this role by pinpointing this hidden (but not too much) connection and find out some of the many places where nuclear physics is at work in our hospitals. Among the many possibilities the role of nuclear physics in the cure of tumours is given, by making reference to the newest technique of radiotherapy, that is the use of hadron beams (mainly protons and carbon ions), to control deep-seated tumours. Changing completely the landscape, a hint of the impact of nuclear interaction on astronauts is given. In spite of the very different environment the same nuclear mechanism, nuclear fragmentation, is at work and drives both the amount of radiation absorbed by the astronauts or the shielding design of the spacecraft.