David W. Mantik, MD, PhD is a radiation oncologist from Rancho Mirage, CA, USA. He received his doctorate in physics from the University of Wisconsin and then did a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Next came a tenure-track faculty position in physics at the University of Michigan, after which he left for medical school at the same institution. After internship and residency in radiation oncology at the LAC/USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, he joined the faculty at the Loma Linda University, where he held a fellowship from the American Cancer Society.
For over 40 years, he has treated cancer patients with X-rays, electrons, and protons. This requires meticulous knowledge of both external and internal anatomy—in the only medical specialty in which this is critical (or else tumors will be missed). In 1993, he visited the National Archives on four separate days to examine the autopsy X-rays and photographs. Altogether, he has visited nine times over multiple years. Whilst there he used a technique called optical densitometry—to study the X-rays. This technique has been available for many years but had never been applied to the JFK autopsy X-rays.