Fonar Corp. v. General Electric Co.
"Fonar" was a dispute between medical device manufacturer Fonar Corporation and General Electric over Fonar's patent on MRI technology. Fonar's founder, Raymond Damadian, was issued U.S. Patent 3,789,832 (priority date 1972-03-17) for an "apparatus and method for detecting cancer in tissue" using the magnetic resonance of atoms. Damadian's patent was the first patent on an MRI machine issued in the United States. Also at issue was a later patent, U.S. Patent 4,871,966 issued in 1989, covering a method for obtaining MRI images of multiple planes at different orientations in a single scan. GE is a major manufacturer of MRI scanners, and Fonar sued GE for infringing these patents by producing its scanners as well as inducing others to infringe.
Oussama Khatib
Developed in 2013 by Samir Menon, Gerald Brantner, and Chris Aholt under Khatib's supervision, HFI is a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) compatible haptic interface with three degrees-of-freedom. The interface allows subjects to perform virtual haptic tasks inside the entire bore of an MRI machine, and is lightweight and transparent to enable high fidelity neuroscience experiments. Khatib's group has successfully demonstrated real-time closed-loop haptic control during a high resolution fMRI scan with low enough noise levels to enable single subject analyses without smoothing.In 2018 Khatib was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to the understanding, analysis, control, and design of robotic systems operating in complex, unstructured, and dynamic environments.