Cancer is now the most probable cause of death in the UK. It will affect one in four of us. About half of those with cancer are treated with radiotherapy. Accurate dose delivery is critical to successful treatment.

NPL provides calibration services, audits and training courses to ensure medical physicists can deliver the correct treatments. We collaborate with the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine to produce measurement protocols. Primary standards are also developed to ensure the best traceable calibrations.

Research and development of methods of dissemination; calibration services; primary standards; and, to some extent, training courses, require the delivery of clinical radiation beams by a Linac, housed in an appropriate building.

This talk will cover all the above, concentrating on the new LinAc and building and explain why NPL is getting a clinical Linac.

Alan DuSautoy joined NPL in 1980. At first he helped develop a new primary standard of absorbed dose for photon beams. This is still in service providing traceable measurement for most of the radiotherapy and industrial radiation processing (e.g. sterilisation) plants in the UK. At this time he gained a MSc in Nuclear and Particle Physics from University of London. He then moved into theoretical work calculating correction factors for primary standards and introducing parallel computing on desktop PCs.

Next he assumed responsibility for the research Linac and helped develop the primary standard and protocols for electron beam therapy. He has collaborated in the UK, within Europe and internationally on a variety of projects. Latterly he has been a Definer and the Group Leader for the Radiation Dosimetry Group. He helped design and plan the new clinical Linac building. Most recently he has become the Impact and Formulation Leader for the Acoustics and Ionising Radiation Team.