Description
Imaging is now firmly established as a part of diagnostic medicine, and methods of creating images of sections of the body (tomography) are well developed. This book grew from rooting around to find the answers to questions such as: who patented techniques for tomography? When was the first patent? Who built the first useful equipment? Did the early pioneers know about each other’s work? Why were there so many different pieces of commercial apparatus? What was the relationship between the early inventors and the commercial companies? How did people go it alone and construct home-made equipment? What was the effect on section imaging of the two World Wars? As the study progressed new questions emerged. Was there cross fertilization of ideas from transmission to emission tomography or vice-versa? Were digital techniques based on earlier analogue methods? When was the first x-ray CT scanner constructed? What national differences influenced developments? What kind of people were responsible for these exciting developments? As one would expect, the well-known names associated with the history of the physics of tomographic radiology are all here. However, a particular delight has been to be able to record the contributions of some less well known figures, who in a way have become personal heroes. Some of these were unable, because of the limitations of the technology of their day, to see their ideas fully evolve. The author believes he has also succeeded despite the mathematical nature of the subject in keeping the number of equations in single figures. Inevitably the subject has been approached from the point of view of the physical scientist. However, here is physics underpinning medicine and this book is as much for all those diagnostic radiologists who enjoy the origins of their techniques. For the more general reader a glossary of technical terms is appended. Another appendix summarises the important developments in radiology in general against which background tomography has evolved. Some readers may prefer to start there before commencing the main text. The work is restricted to the use of ionising radiation to form images both by transmission and emission. Imaging with other modalities, for example ultrasound, nuclear magnetic resonance and thermal energy, is excluded.
