Although Raymond Vahan Damadian (b. 1936) is credited with the idea of turning to nuclear magnetic resonance to look inside the human body, it was Paul Lauterbur (1929-2007) and Peter Mansfield (b. 1933), who carried out the work most strongly linked to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology. The technique makes use of hydrogen atoms resonating when bombarded with' magnetic energy. MRI provides three-dimensional images without harmful radiation and offers more detail than older techniques.
While training as a doctor in New York, Damadian started investigating living cells with a nuclear magnetic resonance machine. In 1971 he found that the signals carried on for longer with cells from tumors than from healthy ones. But the methods used at this time were neither effective nor practical, although Damadian received a patent for such a machine to be used by doctors to pick up cancer cells in 1974.
The real shift came when Lauterbur, a U.S. chemist, introduced gradients to the magnetic field so that the origin of radio waves from the nuclei of the scanned object could be worked out. Through this he created the first MRI images in two and three dimensions. Mansfield, a physicist from England, came up with a mathematical technique that would speed up scanning and make clearer images.
Damadian went on to build the full-body MRI machine in 1977 and he produced the first full MRI scan of the heart, lungs, and chest wall of his skinny graduate student, Larry Minkoff—although in a very different way to modern imaging.
