Raymond Damadian
Damadian is the company's largest shareholder, with 8% of stock worth $6.5 million. Despite owning only 8% of the stock, he maintains almost 100% control of the company through a separate class of shares (Class C) that only Damadian controls 2007. Damadian later collaborated with Wilson Greatbatch, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker, to develop an MRI-compatible pacemaker. He invented a stand-up MRI system and has 15 MRI scanning centers across the United States. There are a number of independent MRI centers that use this technology both in the U.S. and around the world. The company conceived and built the world's first Upright Multi-Positional MRI, which was recognized as The Invention of the Year in 2007 by the Intellectual Properties Owners Association Education Foundation.
Magnetic resonance imaging
In 1971, Paul Lauterbur applied magnetic field gradients in all three dimensions and a back-projection technique to create NMR images. He published the first images of two tubes of water in 1973 in the journal "Nature", followed by the picture of a living animal, a clam, and in 1974 by the image of the thoracic cavity of a mouse. Lauterbur called his imaging method zeugmatography, a term which was later replaced by (N)MR imaging. In the late 1970s, physicists Peter Mansfield and Paul Lauterbur, developed MRI-related techniques, like the echo-planar imaging (EPI) technique. Mansfield and Lauterbur were awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their "discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging".