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Abstract
The difference from a water phantom of the nature and distribution of tissues in the body has been one of the deficiencies in radio-therapeutic practice which has worried me for more than 25 years, but it is only recently that I have seen a way of making an arrangement to overcome this difficulty satisfactorily. It has developed from the idea which I had of compensating for irregularities in skin contours and tissue thickness while still preserving the skin-sparing effect of high-energy beams (Ellis, Hall and Oliver, 1959). Transverse tomography could be used to estimate the distribution in a body section of bone, fat, gas and unit density tissues. If transverse tomograms are taken at different levels through a tumour, then the amount of matter through which each pencil of a treatment beam must pass to reach the tumour can be estimated. Following this, a “compensator” may be built up which, taking account of the different amounts of matter in the body in each part of the beam, so adjusts the absorption that the amount of radiation reaching each part of the tumour is uniform.

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