During 2012 the International College on Medical Physics at ICTP, Trieste, Italy, celebrates its 20th anniversary. During the period this regular (now- biannual) activity the ICTP has educated more than a 1000 young medical physicists mainly from developing countries. The College specially concentrates its activities on Medical Imaging Physics.

In fact ICTP (Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics) has hosted a number of Medical Physics activities, starting in 1982 with the International Conference on the Applications of Physics to Medicine and Biology and continuing with many other Conferences, including one of the EFOMP Conferences in 1996 and the First International Conference on Medical Physics Training (EMERALD) in 1998.

ICTP operates under the aegis of UNESCO and IAEA and naturally hosts many IAEA Workshops and Symposia. In 2005 ICTP was the Co-Organiser of the World Conference Physics and Sustainable Development in Durban, South Africa, where one of the main directions for applied physics in the XXI century was voted to be Physics in Medicine. From the beginning corner stones for the ICTP involvement in Medical Physics were Luciano Bertocchi (than Deputy Director of ICTP) and Anna Benini (than IAEA Officer). Additionally, a number of prominent professionals were engaged with the College on Medical Physics, including John Cameron (USA), Sergio Mascarenhas (Brazil), Perry Sprawls (USA) and Slavik Tabakov (UK). The current Co-Directors include also Franco Milano (Italy) and George D Frey (USA), while the Hospital training is organised by Mario De Denaro.

The International College on Medical Physics is one of the most oversubscribed activities of ICTP. Each College participant receives a full set of training and teaching materials and a number of them have already initiated new Medical Physics courses/workshops in their own countries.