Office Of Public Affairs The More You See, The More You Know Mar
18, 2007 6:00 PM Greater Precision in Medical Imaging Advances
Understanding of Human Disease When German physicist William
Conrad Roentgen discovered a ray that mysteriously passed
through solid matter, he didn't know what to call the perplexing
form of energy. The future Nobel Prize winner solved the problem
by using a mathematical symbol that denotes an unknown quantity
--the letter X. Roentgen's 1895 discovery of the X-ray signaled
a new era in medicine. Within a few years, doctors were X-raying
broken bones and examining the human anatomy as never before.
That was just the precursor of a new medical science that
Roentgen likely could not have imagined. During the next
century, physicians and researchers would make stunningly
detailed images of the brain, blood vessels, and soft tissues,
using powerful magnets and scanners that track isotopes in the
body. Today it's possible to identify tumors the size of a
fingernail, visualize a brain aneur