The first diagnostic Computed Tomography scan was performed in London on this date in 1971. The technology combines X-ray imaging with the power of computers, and its also known as a CT scan or sometimes a CAT scan. A CT scan produces images of cross-sections or slices of the human body, which can then be put together into a three-dimensional picture. Doctors are able to tell the difference between soft tissues, tumors, and blood clots based on CT images, and they can also determine how deep a tumor goes into the surrounding tissue, something that isnt possible with a two-dimensional X-ray. The prototype CT machine took 160 parallel scans about an inch apart, and each scan took about five minutes to complete. Doctors then had to wait more than two hours while the images were processed. Today, a scanner captures slices just millimeters apart and returns the images in seconds. There were five separate researchers working on tomography in the 1960s. Godfrey Hounsfield was the dark horse. He wasnt an academic and didnt publish papers. He didnt apply for any patents until very late in the process, and he was funded internally by his employer, so he never needed to apply for any grants. He had no medical background, and he completed most of his work in secret. The major drawback to his method was that, when the time came to approach practicing neurologists with his invention, he had no track record and was viewed as a crackpot. He finally found an ally in Jamie Ambrose, a consultant radiologist at Londons second-best neurological hospital. They began working together in 1967 — again, under strictest secrecy. Hounsfield tested his scanner first on a preserved human brain, then on a fresh cow brain. Before he tried it on a real patient, he tested it on himself. He performed his first clinical scan for the purpose of diagnosing an actual patient on this date in 1971. He used a prototype scanner installed at Atkinson Morleys Hospital, an old Victorian building up on a hill in Wimbledon. The first patient was a woman whose doctors suspected she had a brain lesion. The scan was pretty blurry by todays standards, but it revealed what appeared to be a dark, circular cyst. When surgeons eventually opened up the womans skull, one of them remarked that the tumor looked exactly like the picture. The CT scan had proved its usefulness — especially in the area of brain imaging, where accuracy is of vital importance. The CT was about a hundred times more detailed than a regular X-ray. After the successful trial, doctors at Atkinson Morleys Hospital grew fond of saying, One CT scan is worth a room full of neurologists.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 09:28:37 +0000
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