Who invented MRI technology?
Raymond Damadian
Damadian has received several prizes. In 2001, the Lemelson-MIT Prize Program bestowed its $100,000 Lifetime Achievement Award on Damadian as "the man who invented the MRI scanner." He went on to collaborate with Wilson Greatbach, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker, to develop an MRI-compatible pacemaker. The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia gave its recognition of Damadian's work on MRI with the Bower Award in Business Leadership. He was also named Knights of Vartan 2003 "Man of the Year". He received a National Medal of Technology in 1988 and was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989.
Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain
The first MR images of a human brain were obtained in 1978 by two groups of researchers at EMI Laboratories led by Ian Robert Young and Hugh Clow. In 1986, Charles L. Dumoulin and Howard R. Hart at General Electric developed MR angiography and , obtained the first images and later patented diffusion MRI. In 1988, Arno Villringer and colleagues demonstrated that susceptibility contrast agents may be employed in perfusion MRI. In 1990, Seiji Ogawa at AT&T Bell labs recognized that oxygen-depleted blood with dHb was attracted to a magnetic field, and discovered the technique that underlies Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
History of magnetic resonance imaging
In 1975, the University of California, San Francisco Radiology Department founded the Radiologic Imaging Laboratory (RIL). With the support of Pfizer, Diasonics, and later Toshiba America MRI, the lab developed new imaging technology and installed systems in the US and worldwide. In 1981 RIL researchers, including Leon Kaufman and Lawrence Crooks, published "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Medicine". In the 1980s the book was considered the definitive introductory textbook to the subject.
Robert Machemer
Robert Machemer (16 March 1933 in Münster – 23 December 2009 in Durham, North Carolina) was a German-American ophthalmologist, ophthalmic surgeon, and inventor. He is sometimes called the "father of modern retinal surgery."
Taseer Badar
In 2001, an investor presented Taseer with an opportunity: new MRI technology. After some advice from his sister Dr. Tehmina Badar, a pulmonologist ; brother-in-law Dr. Shahin Shirzadi, a neurologist; and his best friend Dr. Raza Pasha, an ENT surgeon. Thus began Altus Health.
Nobel Prize controversies
The 2003 prize was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield "for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging" (MRI). Two independent alternatives have been alleged. Raymond Damadian first reported that NMR could distinguish "in vitro" between cancerous and non-cancerous tissues on the basis of different proton relaxation times. He later translated this into the first human scan. Damadian's original report prompted Lauterbur to develop NMR into the present method. Damadian took out large advertisements in an international newspapers protesting his exclusion. Some researchers felt that Damadian's work deserved at least equal credit. Separately, Herman Y. Carr both pioneered the NMR gradient technique and demonstrated rudimentary MRI imaging in the 1950s. The Nobel prize winners had almost certainly seen Carr's work, but did not cite it. Consequently, the prize committee very likely was unaware of Carr's discoveries, a situation likely abetted by Damadian's campaign. Mansfield said in his autobiography that "the person who really missed out" the prize was Erwin Hahn for his contribution to the principles of spin echoes.
Wilhelm Röntgen
In Würzburg, where he discovered the X-rays, a non-profit organization maintains his laboratory and provides guided tours to the Röntgen Memorial Site.World Radiology Day:
The International Day of Radiology is an annual event promoting the role of medical imaging in modern healthcare. It is celebrated on November 8 each year, coincides with the anniversary of the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895. It was first introduced in 2012, as a joint initiative, by the European Society of Radiology (ESR), the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), and the American College of Radiology (ACR).
History of magnetic resonance imaging
John Francis Bovell was the first person to have an MRI scan in the UK in Southampton General Hospital.
History of computed tomography
In the U.S., the first installation was at the Mayo Clinic. As a tribute to the impact of this system on medical imaging the Mayo Clinic has an EMI scanner on display in the Radiology Department. Allan McLeod Cormack of Tufts University in Massachusetts independently invented a similar process, and both Hounsfield and Cormack shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Maurice Wilkins
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins (15 December 1916 – 5 October 2004) was a New Zealand-born British physicist and molecular biologist, and Nobel laureate whose research contributed to the scientific understanding of phosphorescence, isotope separation, optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction, and to the development of radar. He is best known for his work at King's College London on the structure of DNA.
Radiographer
The history of magnetic resonance imaging includes many researchers who have discovered NMR and described its underlying physics, but it is regarded to be invented by Paul C. Lauterbur in September 1971; he published the theory behind it in March 1973. The factors leading to image contrast (differences in tissue relaxation time values) had been described nearly 20 years earlier by Erik Odeblad (doctor and scientist) and Gunnar Lindström.
Saint Boniface Hospital
The Dr. Andrei Sakharov Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Facility, the first of its kind in Manitoba, has three MRI scanners. The facility allows radiologists to diagnose abnormalities of the brain, spinal cord, internal organs and joints. St. Boniface Hospital Research Centre is a recognized leader in the MRI field and has one of the largest MRI research facilities in Canada. An MRI was first installed at St. Boniface in 1990; this MRI was eventually replaced by a more modern version, which is primarily used for clinical purposes. The other two MRIs are research-oriented: they are an interventional scanner and a head-only functional unit. The clinical scanner enables the Centre to do echo-planar imaging, producing images at video rates; the interventional MRI gives physicians access to the patient during imaging, which supports research into robotics-guided laser surgery. Research carried out at the centre has been published in the "Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging".
Mary Lou Jepsen
In 2016, Jepsen founded Openwater, a firm aiming to use infrared holography to make fMRI-type imaging inside the body practical, at the price level of consumer electronics and in wearable form factors. She gave a talk at 2018 TED on the technology behind the Openwater approach.
Fast low angle shot magnetic resonance imaging
FLASH MRI was invented in 1985 by Jens Frahm, Axel Haase, W Hänicke, KD Merboldt, and D Matthaei (German Patent Application P 35 04 734.8, February 12, 1985) at the Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie in Göttingen, Germany. The technique is revolutionary in shortening MRI measuring times by up to two orders of magnitude.
Kenneth Kwong
With this background, Kwong reasoned that the concepts of functional mapping by brain perfusion, and the assessment of oxygenation from purely endogenous signals could be combined into an entirely new method of studying human brain activity. In the spring of 1991 he performed his first human experiments showing that large MRI signal changes were observable in the human brain following exposure to simple visual stimuli, using both blood oxygenation (BOLD) and flow contrast. The first dynamic video images of human brain activity appeared first at a meeting of the Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine in August 1991 in San Francisco in a plenary session by colleague Tom Brady, and was subsequently published in 1992 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (in the same year that Ogawa and colleagues submitted their results subsequently published a year later in PNAS. That same issue also included the work of Seiji Ogawa, then at Bell Labs, who had made similar findings. Most researchers credit Kwong and Ogawa independently with the discovery of what is now called Functional MRI (fMRI).
Imaging biomarker
Imaging biomarkers are as old as the X-ray itself. A feature of a radiograph that represent some kind of pathology was first coined "Roentgen signs" after Wilhelm Röntgen, the discoverer of the X-ray. As the field of medical imaging developed and expanded to include numerous imaging modalities, imaging biomarkers have grown as well, in both quantity and complexity as finally in chemical imaging.
History of magnetic resonance imaging
The history of magnetic resonance imaging includes many researchers who have contributed to the discovery NMR and described its underlying physics, but it is regarded as having been invented by Paul C. Lauterbur in September 1971; he published the theory behind it in March 1973. The factors leading to image contrast (differences in tissue relaxation time values) had been described nearly 20 years earlier by Erik Odeblad (doctor and scientist) and Gunnar Lindström.
Jürgen Hennig
Based on the CPMG multi-echo method, Hennig developed the RARE Sequence (Rapid Acquisition with Relaxation Enhancement) in 1984. Through his work the MR image acquisition time could be significantly reduced, which constituted an important step for its use in clinical routine. In addition, RARE offered the possibility to control the diagnostically relevant T2 contrast in MRI. The RARE method was first published in 1984 in the German journal “Der Radiologe”. His first submission to an international journal was rejected, with the comment that this method had already been tested and wouldn’t work. In the year 1986 international publications followed. RARE is currently one of the standard methods used in clinical MRI. The method is also known by the acronyms TSE (Turbo Spin Echo) and FSE (Fast Spin Echo).
Russell and Sigurd Varian
The Varian brothers and their associates individually left Sperry and returned to the West Coast between 1945 and 1948. After the war, the klystron became an important component in the further development of radar and the microwave industry. It was used in broadcast television and in the development of various telecommunications technologies. In 1950, the Varians were awarded the John Price Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute "in recognition of their foresight ... energy and technical insight in developing ... the klystron". Klystron technology was still being used in 1993 in UHF television, the free-electron laser, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator.
Each brother developed other inventions. Russell gained patents for technology related to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), as used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), thermionic tubes, and various radar technologies. Sigurd's inventions, some of which he patented, included a system of pumps, filters, and heaters for his swimming pool, as well as a high-speed drill press. Sigurd also led projects that built models and prototypes to develop Russell's concepts into usable products. Russell was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree by the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He was also named alumnus of the year by California State Polytechnic College for inventing the Klystron.
Atkinson Morley Hospital
In 1967 an electronics engineer from EMI, Godfrey Hounsfield, visited consultant radiologist Jamie Ambrose to discuss a new method of using x-rays to image the brain. Although Hounsfield had been dismissed as a crank by a neuroradiologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Ambrose and other staff thought the proposal was interesting. Ambrose gave him a bottled brain tumour sample to see if he could make good on his claim that "I can do better" than their state-of-the-art x-ray and ultrasound images. When Hounsfield returned five weeks later with a detailed image of the tumour, Ambrose was convinced and encouraged the Department of Health to fund the building of a prototype scanner. Hospital staff were sworn to secrecy while the first tomographic scanner to allow computed tomographic images of a live patient's brain was constructed and tested in the basement. On 1 October 1971 the first patient was scanned and the data sent off for analysis. The resulting images were examined by the hospital's neuroradiologists, neurologists and neurosurgeons who immediately appreciated their value. There was international media interest and hundreds of clinicians visited the hospital to see the new scanner. Hounsfield shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with the physicist Allan M. Cormack "for the development of computer assisted tomography".
Russell A. Brown
Russell A. Brown, an American physician and computer scientist, is the inventor of the N-localizer technology that enables guidance of stereotactic surgery or radiosurgery using medical images that are obtained via computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or positron emission tomography (PET).
Mass spectrometry imaging
More than 50 years ago, IMS was introduced using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) to study semiconductor surfaces by Castaing and Slodzian. However, it was the pioneering work of Richard Caprioli and colleagues in the late 1990s, demostrating how matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) could be applied to visualize large biomolecules (as proteins and lipids) in cells and tissue to reveal the function of these molecules and how function is changed by diseases like cancer, which led to the widespread use of IMS. Nowadays, different ionization techniques have been used, including SIMS, MALDI and desorption electrospray ionization (DESI), as well as other technologies. Still, MALDI is the current dominant technology with regard to clinical and biological applications of MSI.
History of magnetic resonance imaging
In the 1960s and 1970s the results of a very large amount of work on relaxation, diffusion, and chemical exchange of water in cells and tissues of various types appeared in the scientific literature. In 1967, Ligon reported the measurement of NMR relaxation of water in the arms of living human subjects. In 1968, Jackson and Langham published the first NMR signals from a living animal, an anesthetized rat.
In a March 1971 paper in the journal "Science", Raymond Damadian, an Armenian-American doctor and professor at the Downstate Medical Center State University of New York (SUNY), reported that tumors and normal tissue can be distinguished in vivo by nuclear magnetic resonance ("NMR"). He suggested that these differences could be used to diagnose cancer, though later research would find that these differences, while real, are too variable for diagnostic purposes. Damadian's initial methods were flawed for practical use, relying on a point-by-point scan of the entire body and using relaxation rates, which turned out not to be an effective indicator of cancerous tissue. While researching the analytical properties of magnetic resonance, Damadian created a hypothetical magnetic resonance cancer-detecting machine in 1972. He filed the first patent for such a machine, on March 17, 1972, which was later issued to him on February 5, 1974. Lawrence Bennett and Dr. Irwin Weisman also found in 1972 that neoplasms display different relaxation times than corresponding normal tissue. Zenuemon Abe and his colleagues applied the patent for targeted NMR scanner, on 1973. They published this technique in 1974. Damadian claims to have invented the MRI.
William Webster (chemical engineer)
Webster was also a pioneer in x-ray research and a founder member of the Röntgen Society (since 1927 part of the British Institute of Radiology), assisting surgeon Thomas Moore in producing radiographs in 1896, after which Moore set up an x-ray unit at the Miller General Hospital in Greenwich High Road. Webster is also believed to be the first person to experience radiation 'sunburn', suffered on his right hand. He wrote a letter on the subject of x-ray photography published in the journal "Nature" in 1897.
John Bardeen
The transistor revolutionized the electronics industry, making possible the development of almost every modern electronic device, from telephones to computers, and ushing in the Information Age. Bardeen's developments in superconductivity—for which he was awarded his second Nobel Prize—are used in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
National Institute for Medical Research
In 1962, Nobel Prize winner Sir Peter Medawar became director and, consistent with his research interests, established NIMR as a major centre for immunological research. Following an illness, Medawar retired as director in 1971 to be replaced by Sir Arnold Burgen. Burgan had an interest in nuclear magnetic resonance techniques and formed the MRC Biomedical NMR Centre at the Institute in 1980. Sir Dai Rees became director in 1982 to be replaced by Sir John Skehel in 1987. Since then NIMR has continued to excel scientifically, reporting perhaps most famously the discovery of the sex determining gene SRY, in 1991.
Medical imaging
A magnetic resonance imaging instrument (MRI scanner), or "nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging" scanner as it was originally known, uses powerful magnets to polarize and excite hydrogen nuclei (i.e., single protons) of water molecules in human tissue, producing a detectable signal which is spatially encoded, resulting in images of the body. The MRI machine emits a radio frequency (RF) pulse at the resonant frequency of the hydrogen atoms on water molecules. Radio frequency antennas ("RF coils") send the pulse to the area of the body to be examined. The RF pulse is absorbed by protons, causing their direction with respect to the primary magnetic field to change. When the RF pulse is turned off, the protons "relax" back to alignment with the primary magnet and emit radio-waves in the process. This radio-frequency emission from the hydrogen-atoms on water is what is detected and reconstructed into an image. The resonant frequency of a spinning magnetic dipole (of which protons are one example) is called the Larmor frequency and is determined by the strength of the main magnetic field and the chemical environment of the nuclei of interest. MRI uses three electromagnetic fields: a very strong (typically 1.5 to 3 teslas) static magnetic field to polarize the hydrogen nuclei, called the primary field; gradient fields that can be modified to vary in space and time (on the order of 1 kHz) for spatial encoding, often simply called gradients; and a spatially homogeneous radio-frequency (RF) field for manipulation of the hydrogen nuclei to produce measurable signals, collected through an RF antenna.
Elias Zerhouni
Zerhouni is a highly published scientist in his field, inventor, and entrepreneur. His work led to advances in Computed Tomography (CAT scanning) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that resulted in over 200 peer reviewed publications and 8 patents. Partly based on this research and research and subsequent inventions, Zerhouni founded or co-founded five start-up companies. He founded Computerized Imaging Reference Systems (CIRS) in 1982, where he served as Chairman for several years. He founded Advanced Medical Imaging in 1989, which was later sold to a major public company. He is a co-inventor and co-founder of Biopsys Corporation which became public before being acquired J&J in l997. He co-founded American Radiology Services in 1996 and served as its Chairman and CEO until 2002. He is also a co-inventor and co-founder of Surgivision, Inc., an MRI image-guided surgery company.
Industrial computed tomography
Industrial CT scanning technology was introduced in 1972 with the invention of the CT scanner for medical imaging by Godfrey Hounsfield. The invention earned him a Nobel Prize in medicine, which he shared with Allan McLeod Cormack. Many advances in CT scanning have allowed for its use in the industrial field for metrology in addition to the visual inspection primarily used in the medical field (medical CT scan).
Neville Robinson
In 1973, Robinson published the book "Macroscopic Electromagnetism", a standard text. His paper "Microwave shot noise and minimum noise factor" was awarded the Clerk Maxwell Prize in 1954 by the British Institution of Radio Engineers. Importantly, he invented the Robinson oscillator in the field of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), which now forms the underlying basis of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) systems used in many hospitals.
MRI sequence
Steady-state free precession imaging (SSFP MRI) is an MRI technique which uses steady states of magnetizations. In general, SSFP MRI sequences are based on a (low flip angle) gradient-echo MRI sequence with a short repetition time which in its generic form has been described as the FLASH MRI technique. While spoiled gradient-echo sequences refer to a steady state of the longitudinal magnetization only, SSFP gradient-echo sequences include transverse coherences (magnetizations) from overlapping multi-order spin echoes and stimulated echoes. This is usually accomplished by refocusing the phase-encoding gradient in each repetition interval in order to keep the phase integral (or gradient moment) constant. Fully balanced SSFP MRI sequences achieve a phase of zero by refocusing all imaging gradients.
Paul Lauterbur
Paul Christian Lauterbur (May 6, 1929 – March 27, 2007) was an American chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003 with Peter Mansfield for his work which made the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) possible.
Richard B. Merrill
He was a founder of Foveon in 1997, and worked there until his death from cancer in 2008. He invented the "vertical color filter" technology of the Foveon X3 sensor that is at the heart of the novel digital cameras sold by Sigma Corporation (the SD9, SD10, SD14, DP1, DP2 and DP3).
Radiographer
The United States saw its first medical X-ray obtained using a discharge tube of Ivan Pulyui's design. In January 1896, on reading of Röntgen's discovery, Frank Austin of Dartmouth College tested all of the discharge tubes in the physics laboratory and found that only the Pulyui tube produced X-rays. This was a result of Pulyui's inclusion of an oblique "target" of mica, used for holding samples of fluorescent material, within the tube. On 3 February 1896 Gilman Frost, professor of medicine at the college, and his brother Edwin Frost, professor of physics, exposed the wrist of Eddie McCarthy, whom Gilman had treated some weeks earlier for a fracture, to the X-rays and collected the resulting image of the broken bone on gelatin photographic plates obtained from Howard Langill, a local photographer also interested in Röntgen's work.
Forrest Mims
Mims pursued his electronics avocation while at A&M. His great-grandfather was blind, and this led Mims to create a travel aid for the blind. This device was similar to RADAR, except it used the newly developed infrared-emitting diode to send intense pulses of light that reflected from obstacles. The returned light was converted to an audio tone that increased in amplitude as the distance to the obstacles was reduced. The infrared diodes had just been introduced by Texas Instruments in 1965 and sold for $365 each. Mims visited Dr. Edwin Bonin of Texas Instruments and explained his project. After reviewing the finished design, Dr. Bonin sent Mims three infrared-emitting diodes.
William H. Oldendorf
However, his idea was a fundamental discovery which also led to MRI, positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and other imaging techniques. Once these techniques became widely accepted, Dr. Oldendorf, along with William Markley McKinney, MD (1930–2003) were instrumental in promoting the use of Computed Tomography among neurologists to help decrease the use of superfluous and invasive tests.
George H. Rieke
Rieke helped develop the first infrared-optimized telescope and constructed a series of state-of-the-art focal plane instruments. Rieke was involved with the Space Lab 2 infrared telescope, a pioneering infrared space mission. He led the Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) instrument team for Spitzer. The highly sensitive MIPS camera was built at Ball Aerospace under Rieke's leadership. It provided very high performance imaging and efficient surveying at 24, 70, and 160 microns; the detector arrays for the latter two bands were developed and build under direction by Rieke, Frank Low, and Erick Young at Steward Observatory. Also, Rieke is the lead scientist on a team to produce a mid-infrared instrument (MIRI) for the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018. MIRI operates from 5 to 28.5 microns, providing imaging, coronagraphy, and low and medium resolution spectroscopy. Its focal plane and control electronics were developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (detectors from Raytheon Vision Systems), its crycooler at Northrop Grumman collaborating with JPL, and its optical system and instrument testing under Gillian Wright leading a European Consortium of national institutions. See http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/MIRI.
Gregory Raleigh
Gregory “Greg” Raleigh (born 1961 in Orange, California), is an American radio scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur who has made contributions in the fields of wireless communication, information theory, mobile operating systems, medical devices, and network virtualization. His discoveries and inventions include the first wireless communication channel model to accurately predict the performance of advanced antenna systems, the MIMO-OFDM technology used in contemporary Wi-Fi and 4G wireless networks and devices, higher accuracy radiation beam therapy for cancer treatment, improved 3D surgery imaging, and a cloud-based Network Functions Virtualization platform for mobile network operators that enables users to customize and modify their smartphone services.
Robert Turner (scientist)
From 1988 until 1993 he worked as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. Working with Denis le Bihan, a French neuroradiologist, he initially showed that EPI could be used to provide high quality maps of water diffusion in brain tissue, a discovery (known as Diffusion MRI) which has led to the widespread clinical use of MRI in stroke, where water diffusion in the affected brain tissue drops very rapidly after the ischemic event. The technique also lies at the heart of diffusion tensor imaging, a method for non-invasive study of connecting pathways within the brain’s white matter.
Lie detection
Functional magnetic resonance imaging is a technique used for multiple purposes which shows the uses of oxygen by the brain, allowing for the identification of which portions of the brain are using more oxygen, and thus being used during a specific task. This is called the Blood Oxygen Level Dependent or BOLD hemodynamic response. The first model of the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was built by Raymond Damadian and his colleagues in 1976. It revolutionized the field of anatomical study by providing images in real-time and 3-D models of human parts. The technique is also used in drug development, a wide-variety of research efforts, and diagnostically.
Kenneth Kwong
Upon joining the team at the MGH Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (MGH-NMR) Center, Kwong pursued an interest in perfusion (the distribution of blood an nutrients to tissue) and diffusion (the detection of random dispersion of particles, principally water) in living tissues. Together with MIT graduate student Daisy Chien, and colleagues Richard Buxton, Tom Brady and Bruce Rosen he was one of the earliest entrants in the field of brain diffusion imaging, which itself was opened by the pioneering experiments of Denis Le Bihan. In a conference paper in 1988 at the Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine the MGH group was the first to demonstrate diffusion anisotropy in the human brain, stating, "... "we observed different diffusion patterns parallel and perpendicular to the midline of the brain, which was repeatable, and depended only on the direction of diffusion encoding gradient relative to the brain, regardless of which physical gradient was used".". This anisotropy itself is the fundamental principle underlying the modern method of MRI tractography and structural connectomics (the "in vivo" visualization the axonal fibers that connect neurons in the brain) . Chien and Kwong then used their early diffusion techniques to study human patients with stroke. In technically demanding circumstances (a low field MRI using conventional imaging, located in a parking lot trailer nearby the MGH) they were the first to demonstrate in human subjects the early drop in diffusivity seen in acute infarction in cats by Moseley.
Jens Frahm
Working as a Research Assistant at the Göttingen MPI since 1977 Frahm formed an independent research team which focused on the new possibilities offered by spatially resolved NMR and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) - discovered by Paul Lauterbur in 1974 (Nobel Prize in 2003 for Physiology or Medicine together with Sir Peter Mansfield). In 1982 the Biomedical NMR group was formally founded and from 1984 to 1992 primarily financed via two substantial grants from the Ministry for Research and Technology of the German Federal Government.
Peter Mansfield
In 1964 he returned to England to take up a place as a Lecturer at Nottingham University where he could continue his studies in multiple-pulse NMR. He was successively appointed Senior Lecturer in 1968 and Reader in 1970. During this period his team developed the MRI equipment with the help of grants from the Medical Research Council. It was not until the 1970s with Paul Lauterbur's and Mansfield's developments that NMR could be used to produce images of the body. In 1979 Mansfield was appointed Professor of the Department of Physics until his retirement in 1994.Mansfield is credited with inventing 'slice selection' for MRI and understanding how the radio signals from MRI can be mathematically analysed, making interpretation of the signals into a useful image a possibility. He is also credited with discovering how fast imaging could be possible by developing the MRI protocol called echo-planar imaging. Echo-planar imaging allows T2* weighted images to be collected many times faster than previously possible. It also has made functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) feasible.
Himitsu – Top Secret
A scientist in charge of setting up, programming and monitoring the MRI that connects to the victim's brains and shows the images they saw through their memories during their life. He is the student of Professor Schubert who created the MRI system and best friend of American John Considince a world specialist in bionics who helped him repair the MRI machine after Suzuki shot it. John was killed a week before Onogida himself is murdered after Aoki helps him realize someone was stealing MRI data and selling it elsewhere and Onogida himself uncovers a bigger secret before his untimely death.
Scott E. Fraser
Fraser and his colleagues are known for their development of light and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) microscopy techniques for imaging the dynamics of embryonic development. More recently his research team has taken these imaging techniques into disease models and clinical medicine, in areas ranging from eye disease to cancer.
William P. Murphy Jr.
Murphy practiced medicine for a short time as an intern at St. Francis Hospital in Honolulu and later, at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston (now Brigham & Women’s Hospital). While at St. Francis, he developed his first medical invention—a projector for presenting full-size x-rays to large audiences. Murphy and the other interns were regularly required to show x-rays of their patients to doctors. To simplify this task, Murphy created a projector that was capable of showing a full-size x-ray on the screen and was easy to use—quite an accomplishment at that time, since a prompt means for converting x-rays to transparencies did not exist.
Medical illustration
In 1895, Konrad Roentgen, a German physicist discovered the X-Ray. Internal imaging became a reality after the invention of the X-Ray. Since then internal imaging has progressed to include ultrasonic, CT, and MRI imaging.
Edward Mills Purcell
Born and raised in Taylorville, Illinois, Purcell received his BSEE in electrical engineering from Purdue University, followed by his M.A. and Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University. He was a member of the Alpha Xi chapter of the Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity while at Purdue. After spending the years of World War II working at the MIT Radiation Laboratory on the development of microwave radar, Purcell returned to Harvard to do research. In December 1946, he discovered nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) with his colleagues Robert Pound and Henry Torrey. NMR provides scientists with an elegant and precise way of determining chemical structure and properties of materials, and is widely used in physics and chemistry. It also is the basis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), one of the most important medical advances of the 20th century. For his discovery of NMR, Purcell shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in physics with Felix Bloch of Stanford University.
Albert Macovski
Albert Macovski is an American Professor (Emeritus) at Stanford University, known for his many innovations in the area of imaging, particularly in the medical field. He has over 150 patents and has authored over 200 technical articles. His innovations include the single-tube color camera and real-time phased array imaging for ultrasound. He has also made significant contributions to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computerized axial tomography (CAT scans), and digital radiography. His honors include Founding Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the IEEE Zworykin Award, and the gold medal of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance.
Robert Ledley
Robert Steven Ledley (June 28, 1926 – July 24, 2012), Professor of Physiology and Biophysics and Professor of Radiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine, pioneered the use of electronic digital computers in biology and medicine. In 1959, he wrote two influential articles in "Science": "Reasoning Foundations of Medical Diagnosis" (with Lee B. Lusted) and "Digital Electronic Computers in Biomedical Science". Both articles encouraged biomedical researchers and physicians to adopt computer technology. In 1960 he established the National Biomedical Research Foundation (NBRF), a non-profit research organization dedicated to promoting the use of computers and electronic equipment in biomedical research. At the NBRF Ledley pursued several major projects: the early 1960s development of the Film Input to Digital Automatic Computer (FIDAC), which automated the analysis of chromosomes; the invention of the Automatic Computerized Transverse Axial (ACTA) whole-body CT scanner in the mid-1970s; managing the "Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure" (created in 1965 by Margaret O. Dayhoff); and the establishment of the Protein Information Resource in 1984. Ledley also served as editor of several major peer-reviewed biomedical journals. In 1990, Ledley was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1997. He retired as president and research director of the NBRF in 2010.
William Feindel
In 1959 Feindel re-joined the Montreal Neurological Institute where he founded the William Cone Laboratory for Neurosurgical Research and became the first William Cone Professor of Neurosurgery and then Director of the MNI from 1972 to 1984. During this tenure he led a clinical neuroscience team to acquire the first CAT and combined MRI/S units in Canada and to develop the world's first PET system utilizing a prototype Japanese "Baby" cyclotron and the MNI-designed BGO crystal PET scanner for detecting brain tumours and stroke. He integrated these systems into a Brain Imaging Center (BIC), within a major extension of the MNI, opened in 1984 and since then recognized as a leading world center for clinical diagnosis, teaching and research in neuro-imaging.
Richard Mammone
Richard J. Mammone (born 1953, New York) is an American engineer, inventor, entrepreneur and professor. Dr. Mammone is a serial entrepreneur who enjoys forming and managing new ventures, applying expertise and vision to bring innovations to the marketplace. As an inventor, he holds over 15 patents. To date, he has formed four technology companies including SpeakEZ, a firm that specialized in voice recognition technology, and Computed Anatomy Inc., the business that pioneered LASIK eye surgery.
Peter Mansfield
Sir Peter Mansfield FRS (9 October 1933 – 8 February 2017) was an English physicist who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Paul Lauterbur, for discoveries concerning Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Mansfield was a professor at the University of Nottingham.
James S. Hyde
In MRI, Dr. Hyde recognized that the LGR technology of EPR could be extended to radio frequency (RF) surface coils for improved diagnostic radiology. The principle was established that the best images were obtained by designing special RF coils with dimensions that corresponded to the anatomy that was of interest. He also introduced to MRI the first report on parallel acquisition of MRI data from multiple non-interacting surface coils. Gradient coils are required in order to make an image, and it was natural to consider use of a local gradient coil that was tailored to the anatomy of interest. A local RF coil inside of a local gradient coil was developed for the human wrist. The configuration was then extended to the human head, which led to one of the first papers on human functional MRI (fMRI). This paper was followed by several early fMRI neuroscience papers from MCW. Strong neuroscience at MCW based on reference Bandettini "et al." led to the funding of a Program Project at MCW by the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Hyde served for 10 years as Program Director. The same equipment also was used in the discovery of MRI resting state human functional connectivity (fcMRI), a very heavily cited paper that led to the founding of a new journal: Brain Connectivity, and the funding of the Human Connectome Project. In current work, the basic coil design is being used by Dr. Hyde for fMRI and fcMRI studies of connectivity in rat brain at a field strength of 9.4 Tesla and a resolution of 200 microns in each dimension.Dr. Hyde and his wife Karen are significant contributors to the building of Wisconsin art's reputation and were instrumental in the development of a new building for the Museum of Wisconsin Art, based in West Bend, Wisconsin.http://www.wisconsinart.org/ An award based in their honor was established in 2015 to recognize their contributions in this area. http://www.wisconsinart.org/exhibitions/gifts-of-the-hydes.aspx
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".
Jonathan S. Lewin
Lewin has published more than 250 articles, commentaries, and chapters and has served on editorial boards or as an editor for the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, the "American Journal of Neuroradiology", the "Journal of the American College of Radiology", "Magnetic Resonance Imaging Clinics of North America, Topics in Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and Current Protocols in Magnetic Resonance Imaging". In addition, he holds more than twenty-five patents for inventions related to MRI technology and has been principal or co-principal investigator on more than $10 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health and other federal and state funding agencies.
Radiology
Radiographs (originally called roentgenographs, named after the discoverer of X-rays, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen) are produced by transmitting X-rays through a patient. The X-rays are projected through the body onto a detector; an image is formed based on which rays pass through (and are detected) versus those that are absorbed or scattered in the patient (and thus are not detected). Röntgen discovered X-rays on November 8, 1895 and received the first Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery in 1901.
Paul Bottomley (scientist)
Paul Bottomley pioneered the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) leading to modern commercial clinical 1.5 Tesla MRI scanners and techniques for localized magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). Currently, he is Russel H. Morgan Professor of Radiology and Director of the Division of MR Research at Johns Hopkins University, with ~200 peer-reviewed journal articles, almost 50 U.S patents and is a Founder and past member of the Board of Directors of MRI Interventions, Inc MRI Interventions, formerly known as SurgiVision Inc.
Paul Lauterbur
The Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952, which went to Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell, was for the development of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), the scientific principle behind MRI. However, for decades magnetic resonance was used mainly for studying the chemical structure of substances. It wasn't until the 1970s with Lauterbur's and Mansfield's developments that NMR could be used to produce images of the body.
Roentgenium
The name "roentgenium" (Rg) was suggested by the GSI team in 2004, to honor the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, the discoverer of X-rays. This name was accepted by IUPAC on November 1, 2004.
Howard Cary
Henry Cary (3 May 1908 – 20 December 1991) was an American engineer and the co-founder of the Applied Physics Corporation (later known as Cary Instruments), along with George W. Downs and William Miller. The Cary 14 UV-Vis-NIR and the Cary Model 81 Raman Spectrophotometer were particularly important contributions in scientific instrumentation and spectroscopy. Before starting Applied Physics, Cary was employed by Beckman Instruments, where he worked on the design of several instruments including the ubiquitous DU spectrophotometer. Howard Cary was a founder and the first president of the Optical Society of Southern California.
Weber Research Institute
The Microwave Research Institute (MRI) was founded in 1945 by Ernst Weber at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (which later became the Polytechnic Institute of New York University). Research conducted at the institute included work in the areas of "electromagnetic theory, antennas and radiation, network theory and microwave networks, microwave components and devices." MRI was internationally regarded as one of the foremost centers of research on microwave field theory in the world. In 1985 it was renamed the Weber Research Institute in honor of its founder.Among its most prominent members were Nathan Marcuvitz, Leo B. Felsen, Dante C. Youla and Arthur A. Oliner, all fellows of IEEE and members of the National Academy of Engineering. The institute has attracted researchers from all over the world, including Alexander Graham Bell Medal winner Tsuneo Nakahara, who in 1961 was a visiting research associate of the institute, and who went on to be vice chairman of the Sumitomo Electric Company, and Dr. Oguchi, who became chief engineer of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone. Another faculty member closely associated with MRI was KunMo Chung, Director of the Plasma Physics Laboratory from 1967 to 1975, who served as Minister of Science and Technology of South Korea two times and who was associated with numerous international science and technology agencies.
General Electric Company
In 1981, GEC acquired two more US companies: Mitel and the Picker Corporation, an American manufacturer of medical imaging equipment. GEC merged Picker with Cambridge Instruments, GEC Medical, and American Optical to form Picker International (PI). GEC Medical was itself an amalgamation of Watson & Sons Ltd, formed in the early 20th century in London and long a part of GEC, and A E Dean & Co of Croydon. In 1982, PI introduced the first 1.0T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit. In 1998, it acquired the CT division of Elscint Ltd. In 1999, the company changed its name to Marconi Medical Systems. In 2001, Philips Electronics bought Marconi Medical Systems for $1.1 billion.
Seiji Ogawa
Seiji Ogawa (小川 誠二 "Ogawa Seiji", born January 19, 1934) is a Japanese researcher known for discovering the technique that underlies Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). He is regarded as the father of modern functional brain imaging. He determined that the changes in blood oxygen levels cause its magnetic resonance imaging properties to change, allowing a map of blood, and hence, functional, activity in the brain to be created. This map reflected which neurons of the brain responded with electrochemical signals to mental processes. He was the first scientist who demonstrated that the functional brain imaging is dependent on the oxygenation status of the blood, the BOLD effect. The technique was therefore called Blood oxygenation level-dependent or BOLD contrast. Functional MRI (fMRI) has been used to map the visual, auditory and sensory regions and moving toward higher brain functions such as cognitive functions in the brain.
Jonathan S. Lewin
Jonathan S. Lewin (born 1959) is an American neuroradiologist specializing in medical imaging research with an emphasis on the investigation, development, and translation of new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. He serves as executive vice president for health affairs (EVPHA) for Emory University, executive director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, and president, CEO, and chairman of the board of Emory Healthcare. He is also professor of both radiology and imaging sciences and of biomedical engineering in the Emory School of Medicine and adjunct professor of health policy in the Rollins School of Public Health.
Paul Bottomley (scientist)
Born in Melbourne, Australia, Bottomley earned a BSc in Physics from Monash University in 1974. In 1975, he started a PhD in Physics at the University of Nottingham in one of the three original groups that began MRI. In Raymond Andrew’s group, alongside that of Peter Mansfield, they built the first MRI system producing radiographic-quality images of the human wrist (Nature), and performed the initial work on RF-field and power deposition in human MRI. Upon completing his PhD, he went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1978 to adapt MRI for spatially localized MRS, using surface coils to demonstrate metabolite depletion and reversal in regional myocardial ischemia (Science).
John Macintyre
Late in 1895, X-rays were discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen. On 5 February 1896 James Thomson Bottomley asked McIntyre to demonstrate an x-ray machine created by his uncle, William Thomson, Lord Kelvin following instructions from Rontgen (Lord Kelvin was ill and could not attend). The demonstration took place at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and was the first use of x-rays in Scotland. All Scottish hospitals introduced x-ray machines within the next 12 months.
James S. Hyde
James S. Hyde (born 1932) is an American biophysicist. He holds the James S. Hyde chair in Biophysics at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) where he specializes in magnetic resonance instrumentation and methodology development in two distinct areas: electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He is senior author of the widely cited 1995 paper by B.B. Biswal "et al." reporting the discovery of resting state functional connectivity (fcMRI) in the human brain. He also serves as Director of the National Biomedical EPR Center, a Research Resource supported by the National Institutes of Health. He is author or more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and review articles and holds 35 U.S. Patents. He has been recognized by Festschrifts in both EPR and fcMRI.
Martin Ryle
Sir Martin Ryle (27 September 1918 – 14 October 1984) was an English radio astronomer who developed revolutionary radio telescope systems (see e.g. aperture synthesis) and used them for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sources. In 1946 Ryle and Derek Vonberg were the first people to publish interferometric astronomical measurements at radio wavelengths. With improved equipment, Ryle observed the most distant known galaxies in the universe at that time. He was the first Professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, and founding director of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. He was Astronomer Royal from 1972 to 1982. Ryle and Antony Hewish shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974, the first Nobel prize awarded in recognition of astronomical research. In the 1970s, Ryle turned the greater part of his attention from astronomy to social and political issues which he considered to be more urgent.
Magnetic particle imaging
Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is an emerging non-invasive tomographic technique that directly detects superparamagnetic nanoparticle tracers. The technology has potential applications in diagnostic imaging and material science. Currently, it is used in medical research to measure the 3-D location and concentration of nanoparticles. Imaging does not use ionizing radiation and can produce a signal at any depth within the body. MPI was first conceived in 2001 by scientists working at the Royal Philips Research lab in Hamburg. The first system was established and reported in 2005. Since then, the technology has been advanced by academic researchers at several universities around the world. The first commercial MPI scanners have recently become available from Magnetic Insight and Bruker Biospin.
MRI Robot
The Automation and Interventional Medicine Robotics Lab at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has been developing enabling technologies for MRI-guided interventions. This work includes MR-compatible sensors, actuators, software, and controllers. The group has also developed various types of fully MRI-compatible robots for percutaneous prostate interventions and another one for guiding deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrode placement under real-time MR image guidance for the treatment of Parkinson's Disease.
Mental Research Institute
The Mental Research Institute (MRI), established in 1958 by Donald deAvila Jackson, is a small, independent, multi-disciplinary, non-profit corporation:The focus of MRI is to explore and to encourage the use of an interactional approach to further understand and more effectively resolve human problems from the family to all other levels of social organization.The bibliography of associates of MRI lists over 1000 journal and book publications.
Christopher J. Hardy
Christopher J. Hardy (born 1955) is an American physicist and inventor of several magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) subsystem technologies for use in real time MRI and cardiac MR imaging and spectroscopy.
Radiography
The United States saw its first medical X-ray obtained using a discharge tube of Ivan Pulyui's design. In January 1896, on reading of Röntgen's discovery, Frank Austin of Dartmouth College tested all of the discharge tubes in the physics laboratory and found that only the Pulyui tube produced X-rays. This was a result of Pulyui's inclusion of an oblique "target" of mica, used for holding samples of fluorescent material, within the tube. On 3 February 1896 Gilman Frost, professor of medicine at the college, and his brother Edwin Frost, professor of physics, exposed the wrist of Eddie McCarthy, whom Gilman had treated some weeks earlier for a fracture, to the X-rays and collected the resulting image of the broken bone on gelatin photographic plates obtained from Howard Langill, a local photographer also interested in Röntgen's work.
Raymond Damadian
Thus it was the discovery of strongly variant relaxation times that led to Lauterbur's quest to represent these relaxation time differences graphically. Without these differences, unknown until Damadian's work, there would be nothing to make an image with. Hence a book on MRI history, which included chapters on both Damadian and Lauterbur, Chapter 8 entitled, “Raymond V. Damadian: Originator of the Concept of Whole-Body NMR Scanning (MRI) and Discoverer of the NMR Tissue Relaxation Differences That Made It Possible.” The book pointed out the importance of both men:
Surface nuclear magnetic resonance
The MRS technique was originally conceived in the 1960s by Russell H. Varian, one of the inventors of the proton magnetometer. SNMR is a product of a joint effort by many scientists and engineers who started developing this method in the USSR under the guidance of A.G. Semenov and continued this work all over the world. Semenov’s team used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for non-invasive detection of proton-containing liquids (hydrocarbons or water) in the subsurface. The Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion (ICKC) of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences fabricated the first version of the instrument for measurements of magnetic resonance signals from subsurface water ("hydroscope") in 1981.
William A. Edelstein
Edelstein’s contributions to MRI technology include pulse sequence optimization, radio-frequency-coil and gradient-coil design, circuitry improvements, high field imaging, acoustic noise reduction, and the NMR Phased Array.
History of magnetic resonance imaging
In 1986, Charles L. Dumoulin and Howard R. Hart at General Electric developed MR angiography and , obtained the first images and later patented diffusion MRI. In 1988, Arno Villringer and colleagues demonstrated that susceptibility contrast agents may be employed in perfusion MRI. In 1990, Seiji Ogawa at AT&T Bell labs recognized that oxygen-depleted blood with dHb was attracted to a magnetic field, and discovered the technique that underlies Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
X-ray generator
The discovery of X-rays came from experimenting with Crookes tubes, an early experimental electrical discharge tube invented by English physicist William Crookes around 1869-1875. In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays emanating from Crookes tubes and the many uses for X-rays were immediately apparent. One of the first X-ray photographs was made of the hand of Röntgen's wife. The image displayed both her wedding ring and bones. On January 18, 1896 an "X-ray machine" was formally displayed by Henry Louis Smith. A fully functioning unit was introduced to the public at the 1904 World's Fair by Clarence Dally.
Val Murray Runge
Val Murray Runge (born August 28, 1956 in Austin, Texas) is an American professor of radiology and the editor-in-chief of "Investigative Radiology". Runge was one of the early researchers to investigate the use of gadolinium-based contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
W. Ironside Bruce
William Ironside Bruce (1876 – 21 March 1921) was a physician in Europe who conducted early research on the use of X-rays. He headed the X-ray departments at Charing Cross Hospital and at the Hospital for Sick Children. He wrote an early book on X-ray techniques and he was president of the radiology section of the Royal Society of Medicine. In 1921, Bruce was diagnosed with aplastic anaemia, which his physicians attributed to his work with X-rays. He died two months after being diagnosed with the illness. Bruce's death led to the establishment of an X-ray safety committee in Great Britain.
Isidor Isaac Rabi
In September 1940, Rabi became a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the U.S. Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. That month, the British Tizard Mission brought a number of new technologies to the United States, including a cavity magnetron, a high-powered device that generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field. This device, which promised to revolutionize radar, demolished any thoughts the Americans had entertained about their technological leadership. Alfred Lee Loomis of the National Defense Research Committee decided to establish a new laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop this radar technology. The name Radiation Laboratory was chosen as both unremarkable and a tribute to the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. Loomis recruited Lee DuBridge to run it.
Cheon Jinwoo
Through his fundamental studies, he integrated the fields of inorganic nanomaterials and medical science. This nexus led to the advent of a new field known as "nanomedicine". In 2005, for the first time, he demonstrated the principle of size-dependent MRI contrast effects using nanoparticles. This enabled the development of a new class of nano-MRI contrast agent, MEIO (magnetism-engineered iron oxide) which displayed 10 times stronger MRI signals compared to those of conventional contrast agents. This study opened possibilities to the advancement of the early stage diagnosis of cancer and stands as a research milestone in the field. In addition, Cheon developed multimodal probes to enhance the imaging accuracy by designing opto-magnetic probe, PET-MRI probes, dual-mode T1-T2 MRI probes. Successful discrimination of true signal of biological targets could be attained by these developments, opening a new avenue to have accurate diagnosis of disease.
EMI
In the early 1970s, with financial support by the UK Department of Health and Social Security as well as EMI research investment, Hounsfield developed the first CT scanner, a device which revolutionised medical imaging. In 1973 EMI was awarded a prestigious Queen's Award for Technological Innovation for what was then called the "EMI scanner", and in 1979 Hounsfield won the Nobel Prize for his accomplishment.
Ronald J. Ross
Ronald J. Ross is a Cleveland, Ohio radiologist known for research on brain injury in professional and amateur boxers and for the first clinical use of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMR later known as MRI) on human patients. Ross is also credited with the first use of head and whole body computed tomography imaging (CT) in a private clinical setting in the United States.
Magnetorotational instability
The MRI was first noticed in a non-astrophysical context by Evgeny Velikhov in 1959 when considering the stability of Couette flow of an ideal hydromagnetic fluid. His result was later generalized by S. Chandrasekhar in 1960. This mechanism was proposed by Acheson & Hide (1973) to perhaps play a role in the context of the Earth's geodynamo problem. Although there was some follow-up work in later decades (Fricke, 1969; Acheson and Hide 1972; Acheson and Gibbons 1978), the generality and power of the instability were not fully appreciated until 1991, when Balbus & Hawley gave a relatively simple elucidation and physical explanation of this important process.
History of neuroimaging
The first neuroimaging technique ever is the so-called ‘human circulation balance’ invented by Angelo Mosso in the 1880s and able to non-invasively measure the redistribution of blood during emotional and intellectual activity. 
Then, in the early 1900s, a technique called pneumoencephalography was set. This process involved draining the cerebrospinal fluid from around the brain and replacing it with air, altering the relative density of the brain and its surroundings, to cause it to show up better on an x-ray, and it was considered to be incredibly unsafe for patients (Beaumont 8). A form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) were developed in the 1970s and 1980s. The new MRI and CT technologies were considerably less harmful and are explained in greater detail below. Next came SPECT and PET scans, which allowed scientists to map brain function because, unlike MRI and CT, these scans could create more than just static images of the brain's structure. Learning from MRI, PET and SPECT scanning, scientists were able to develop functional MRI (fMRI) with abilities that opened the door to direct observation of cognitive activities.
William A. Edelstein
William A. Edelstein (November 21, 1944 – February 10, 2014) was an American physicist. One of the key developers of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), he was part of the team that developed the first full-body MRI scanner at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and was the primary inventor of spin-warp imaging, which is still used in all commercial MRI systems.
Siemens Healthineers
In a similar fashion, Siemens launched the Biograph mMR in 2010, the first scanner to completely combine MRI and PET technologies. . Like PET-CT, PET-MR hybrid systems combine multiple technologies to provide a better image of the body, enabling for better diagnoses, research and treatment plans for patients. It combines precise images of the body's organs from MRI with metabolic cell activity from PET.
Vasilis Ntziachristos
Another focus of Ntziachristos' research is developing optoacoustic techniques for breaking thought the penetration barriers of conventional optical imaging methods. His group develops hardware, image reconstruction, spectral unmixing and information processing techniques as well as applications in biology and medicine. Among many other inventions, he is the inventor of multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) and raster scan optoacoustic mesoscopy (RSOM), which are non-invasive imaging methods that simultaneously measure different parameters of tissue physiology and pathology non-invasively, allowing new ways to diagnose disease and monitor treatment. MSOT and RSOM are now used in a range of preclinical and clinical studies, including advancing characterization of psoriasis, breast tumors, metastatic melanoma and inflammation in Crohn's disease. MSOT has also been used to visualize metabolism within brown fat, suggesting it may be effective for analyzing muscle energetics and lipid metabolism in a much simpler and more accessible way than with other techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging. Ntziachristos is a founder of iThera Medical GmbH, which currently commercializes optoacoustic technology and has placed systems around the world.Ntziachristos is author or co-author of more than 400 publications in peer reviewed journals and a holder of more than 25 patents. His work has been cited more than 33,000 times (as at October 2018). His h-index is 88.
ECRI Institute
In the early 1960s, Joel J. Nobel founded ECRI Institute after a four-year-old boy died in his arms from a defibrillator failing to work. He focused his energy on improving resuscitation technology and organization, which led to ECRI Institute being founded. Joel also invented the MAX Cart, a mobile resuscitation system designed to save lives by enabling rapid medical action. The cart carries instruments for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other medical supplies while also functioning as a support litter for a patient. A prototype of the MAX medical emergency crash cart has been accepted into the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Medicine and Science Division, as part of its historical collection of cardiology and emergency-medicine objects. Nobel, a surgeon and inventor, designed and patented MAX in 1965 while a resident at Pennsylvania Hospital, in order to speed the delivery of emergency cardiopulmonary care to patients. Life magazine profiled the invention in a 1966 feature called "MAX, the Lifesaver." In 2001, Dr. Jeffrey C. Lerner became ECRI Institute’s second President and Chief Executive Officer. In 2018, Dr. Marcus Schabacker became ECRI Institute’s third President and Chief Executive Officer.
Neuroimaging
More or less concurrently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI or MR scanning) was developed by researchers including Peter Mansfield and Paul Lauterbur, who were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2003. In the early 1980s MRI was introduced clinically, and during the 1980s a veritable explosion of technical refinements and diagnostic MR applications took place. Scientists soon learned that the large blood flow changes measured by PET could also be imaged by the correct type of MRI. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was born, and
since the 1990s, fMRI has come to dominate the brain mapping field due to its low invasiveness, lack of radiation exposure, and relatively wide availability.
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.
X-ray
Many experimenters, including Röntgen himself in his original experiments, came up with methods to view X-ray images "live" using some form of luminescent screen. Röntgen used a screen coated with barium platinocyanide. On February 5, 1896 live imaging devices were developed by both Italian scientist Enrico Salvioni (his "cryptoscope") and Professor McGie of Princeton University (his "Skiascope"), both using barium platinocyanide. American inventor Thomas Edison started research soon after Röntgen's discovery and investigated materials' ability to fluoresce when exposed to X-rays, finding that calcium tungstate was the most effective substance. In May 1896 he developed the first mass-produced live imaging device, his "Vitascope", later called the fluoroscope, which became the standard for medical X-ray examinations. Edison dropped X-ray research around 1903, before the death of Clarence Madison Dally, one of his glassblowers. Dally had a habit of testing X-ray tubes on his hands, and acquired a cancer in them so tenacious that both arms were amputated in a futile attempt to save his life and in 1904 he became the first known death attributed to X-ray exposure. During the time the fluoroscope was being developed Serbian American physicist Mihajlo Pupin, using a calcium tungstate screen developed by Edison, found that using a fluorescent screen decreased the exposure time it took to create a X-ray for medical imaging from an hour to a few minutes.
Ferenc A. Jolesz
The team, consisting of members of the departments of Radiology and Otorhinolaryngology and the neurosurgical service at BWH and industrial collaborators from General Electric Medical Systems, developed and built an entire operating suite built around a specially-designed 0.5 Tesla MRI scanner that allowed ongoing patient scans to be obtained during a surgical procedure. Information from the scans, including imaging data registered with three-dimensional models created from pre-operative imaging, was available to the surgical team to help guide the procedure. The system became known as MRT (for Magnetic Resonance Therapy) at BWH and commercialized by GE Medical Systems as the GE Signa SP.
Raymond Damadian
On July 3, 1977, the first MRI body exam was performed on a human being (the first human scan was performed by Peter Mansfield's team in Nottingham a year earlier, on fellow author Andrew Maudsley's finger). It took almost five hours to produce one image: a 106-voxel point-by-point scan of Larry Minkoff's thorax. The images were rudimentary by modern standards. Damadian, along with colleagues Larry Minkoff and Michael Goldsmith took seven years to reach this point. They named their original machine “Indomitable” to capture the spirit of their struggle to do what many said could not be done, though no systems would ever use Damadian's method. His technique of imaging was never made into a practically usable method and has therefore never been used in MR imaging as we know it today.
Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging
The Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a research institute which develops magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for both cognitive neuroscience and medical diagnosis and treatment.
Siemens Healthineers
The first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, Siemens’ MAGNETOM system, came to the market in 1983. With the aid of powerful magnetic fields, MRI scanners produce high-quality cross-sectional images without exposing patients to radiation. The sectional images displayed tissues and organs more clearly than ever before.
East Midlands
Boots UK is based in Lenton in Nottingham, with 2,500 UK stores, where Stewart Adams developed Ibuprofen in the 1960s on Rutland Road in West Bridgford, and Vision Express are nearby, next to the A52. Boots was the biggest chemist chain in the world; now A.S. Watson Group is the world's biggest health retail company. Crookes Healthcare, formerly Boots and now Reckitt Benckiser, make Strepsils and Optrex on the enormous Boots site, and Boots Contract Manufacturing (BCM) make products for other firms; it makes Benylin for McNeil. On the ng2 business park, Specsavers have their corporate eyecare and contact lens division. Three out of the four main UK opticians are sited in Nottingham. The MRI scanner was developed at the University of Nottingham by Sir Peter Mansfield; MRI scanners were developed mainly by GEC Medical, once invented; MRI harnesses nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) of the hydrogen nucleus; Raymond Vahan Damadian of USA also claims the MRI invention.
Proton-enhanced nuclear induction spectroscopy
Proton-enhanced nuclear induction spectroscopy (PENIS), also sometimes called Cross Polarisation (CP), is a nuclear magnetic resonance technique invented by Michael Gibby and Alexander Pines while they were graduate students in the lab of Professor John S. Waugh at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was one of the first of Pines' experiments transferring spin orientation from one atomic nucleus to another, which has been one of the running themes throughout his career as a leading pioneer in the applications of NMR to the study of non-liquid samples. The PENIS technique was patented in 1972.
Louisiana Purchase Exposition
X-ray machine – The X-ray machine was an invention which had its public debut at the 1904 World's Fair. X-rays were first discovered in November 1895 by a German scientist, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who at the time was studying the phenomena accompanying the passage of an electric current through a gas of extremely low pressure. After Rontgen's discovery, he took an x-ray of his wife's hand, showing the bones and her fingers along with her wedding ring, and sent it to several of his scientist colleagues. One of the scientists that learned of the discovery was Thomas Edison and he soon began to experiment with his own x-ray machine with his assistant Clarence Dally. In 1901, Dally brought a test version of the x-ray machine to the 1901 World's Fair, but failed to test the machine when President McKinley was assassinated. For the 1904 World's Fair, the x-ray machine was perfected and successfully shown to the public. X-rays are now commonplace in hospitals and airports.