The Department of Radiology has a long history. In 1901, the first radiograph of human body in China was generated here by using an x-ray machine from Germany in our hospital. This event created a sensation in Guangzhou of that time and signified the beginning of clinical practice of diagnostic imaging in our hospital. In 1949, the Department of Radiology was formally established. Professor Xie Zhiguang, a well-known founder and famous radiologist of clinical radiology in China, served as the first director of the Department of Radiology. Through the unremitting efforts of all directors in more than one hundred years, the Department of Radiology has now developed into a public modern imaging diagnosis and interventional treatment platform with a strong medical and technical expertise team that is well-matched to a large-scale research-type general hospital.

Now, the Department of Radiology consists of the diagnostic radiology section I located in the hospital headquarter, the diagnostic radiology section II located in the southern division of hospital, and the DSA public platform located in the hospital headquarter. It owns four units of 3.0 T MRI, two units of 1.5 T MRI, and 4 high-performance CT scanner. The Department of Radiology has 37 physicians including 6 chief physicians and 7 associate chief physicians, 3 of them are doctoral supervisors and 15 of them are master tutors. The staff also includes 56 technicians including 3 associate chief technicians, and 14 nurses. One chief physician is honored with the title of famous doctor of Sun Yat-sen University, 1 with distinguished professor of Zhujiang Scholars in Guangdong Province, 1 with New Century Excellent Talent from the Ministry of Education, and 1 with the title of Yangcheng Good Doctor. The Department of Radiology can finish more than 400,000 imaging examinations including 220,000 X-ray radiograpy, 130,000 CT scanning and 50,000 MRI examination. The positive rate of diagnostic imaging is over 90%, and the diagnostic accuracy rate is over 93%. It also provides a large number of imaging diagnosis consultations for hard-to-management patients in and out of the hospital including Xinjiang and Tibet districts.

The Department of Radiology adheres to the tenet of "seeking truth and pursing excellence" and the concept of "co-advancement of medical practice and teaching and research, synergistic development of diagnostic imaging and technology and nursing, co-advocation of science, technology and humanities ". The development goal of the Department of Radiology is realizing an internationally advanced radiology discipline, through persistent and constant improving the clinical application of diagnostic imaging, developing new imaging technologies and conducting interdisciplinary cooperative research in order to improve the levels of diagnostic imaging, medical education and academic research.

The Department of Radiology focus on developing and expanding new imaging technologies to resolve the diagnosis and imaging assessment of major and refractory diseases and has become a key medical imaging specialty in Guangdong Province. The Department of Radiology has established many operating procedures and technical specifications for whole-body imaging and nursing and established a comprehensive quality control and medical safety guarantee rules including the three-level audit system of radiology reports and continuous quality improvement system. The Department of Diagnostic Radiology has been the first to release a guideline for standardized CT image postprocessing and a manual of standardized MRI scanning of the whole body in Guangdong province.

The Department of Radiology is an authorized doctoral and master's degree granting institution and a post-doctoral station of the Ministry of Education, a national specialty base for standardized training of resident physicians, and a national clinical drug trial base. The Department of Radiology also undertakes teaching work of diagnostic imaging for the five-year, eight-year, master's and doctor's students of Sun Yat-sen University. In addition, it also accepts more than 100 doctors, technicians and nurses from other hospitals to finish their re-fresh learning. Each year, it holds six different national medical continuing education courses including diagnosis, techniques, nursing and academic research.

The Department of Radiology has a wide range of research interest. It has conducted a wide multi-disciplinary cooperative research not only domestically but also internationally. In the past five years, the research of the Department of Radiology has been supported by more than 20 national, provincial and ministerial scientific research programs such as general project and joint funds from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, sub-project of 973 Program, programs of the Key Areas Research and Development Program of Guangdong, and general programs of the scientific research projects of Guangdong Province. The staff of the Department of Radiology has published more than 100 scientific papers on SCI-indexed academic journals. Many papers had been published in high-level academic journals such as Cell, Nat Biomed Eng, Adv Sci, Nat Commun, Adv Funct Mater, ASC Nano, Small, Nano Lett, Biomaterials, Clin Cancer Res, J ImmunoTher Cancer, Radiology, Int J Cancer, J Mater Chem, etc.

With these achievements, the staff of the Department of Radiology will continue to make every effort to build a domestic high-level medical imaging center, a molecular imaging translational medicine base, a medical-engineering cooperative clinical research base, and a diagnostic imaging and consultation center for intractable diseases in South China. The Department of Radiology will strive to evolve into an internationally famous medical imaging center and internationalized radiology discipline.