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Radiotherapy has been driven by constant technological advances since the discovery of X rays in 1895. This Timeline article covers the history of radiotherapy and focuses on the advances of major importance in the past two decades. These changes have provided clinical benefit for patients with cancer.
Once upon a time, around 100 years ago, there was an X ray image of a sarcoma. From then on, increasingly complex functional imaging techniques were developed and are now applicable in both clinical and research platforms. This Timeline article revisits the achievements of the pioneer techniques in cancer imaging, discussing how they have changed over time and envisioning how imaging will remodel the future of modern oncology.
