Developing and understanding a hospital-based proton facility: bringing physics into medicine.

From October 18 to 20, 2006, a symposium, Developing and Understanding a Hospital-based Proton Facility: Bringing Physics Into Medicine, was held at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort and Spa, Indian Wells, California. The event was offered by the Department of Radiation Medicine at Loma Linda University (LLU), supported by the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) and the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC). The meeting was intended to discuss factors involved in planning, developing, and operating a hospital-based proton treatment center. It brought together some of the most distinguished physicists, radiation biologists, and radiation oncologists in the world, and more than 100 individuals participated in the three-day educational offering. This overview reports on the event and introduces several papers written by many of the speakers from their presentations, for publication in this issue of Technology in Cancer Research and Treatment. Both the symposium and the papers are appropriate for this journal: exploitation of technology was one of the underlying themes of the symposium.