Thanks for this bit of history.  I am one of the benefactors of
CAT-Scans.  After my first one when family inquired about the results of
the scan I told them no cats were found!!  Thank goodness I dislike
domesticated cats.

I personally like the MIR's and Nuclear MRI's (I don't remember it's
name though)  The pictures that these devices create are really
something to look at.

I am, as many are, the beneficiaries of people like Sir Godfrey.



-----Original Message-----
From: Wirt Atmar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 11:45 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [HP3000-L] OT: A death in the family


Godfrey Hounsfield died a few days ago, and I've included an obituary
from today's New York Times below. His life story is one of my
favorites. He received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his invention of
the CAT scan, even though he never attended university. Rather, his
education was through the RAF and a technical school. But perhaps the
most interesting part of the story, beyond Hounsfield's obvious
intelligence and curiosity, is that he went to work for EMI in the early
1950's. In the latter half of the 1960's, EMI became exceedingly wealthy
because they were the recording studios for the Beatles, and this excess
wealth allowed Hounsfield the freedom to perfect his work on the idea.

CAT scans aren't called CAT scans anymore. They're called CT scans
nowadays, but the original acronym stood for "computed axial
tomography." The last word is a combination of the Latin/Greek words for
"knife" (or "slice"), "tomo-", and "picture" (-graph). This is why books
are sometimes called "tomes" (a "slice" of knowledge), and why ecology
undergraduates are given "geotomes" ("earth
knives") to operate, instruments which are more commonly called
"shovels", in the vulgate. A "tomograph" is an image slice.

I once team-taught a graduate class in 2-D signal processing in
electrical engineering at our local university. 1-D digital signal
processing operates on a linear file, such as an audio signal. 2-D DSP
operations work on images. One of my sections that I drew to teach was
on CAT scans, and I taught the two primary methods of solving a CAT
image: massive simultaneous linear equations and convolution integrals.
I'm relatively sure that the only thing that anyone remembered from that
section was what I said at the beginning: "There's more than one way to
scan a CAT."

While I would never recommend anyone skipping a formal education,
Hounsfield's story still reverberates about the extraordinary quality of
work that can be done by someone who is imaginative, curious,
intelligent, when given the opportunity.

Wirt Atmar

=======================================

August 20, 2004
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, Who Helped Develop the CAT Scanner, Dies at 84
By JEREMY PEARCE

Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, a British electrical engineer whose work in
creating the computerized axial tomography scanner, the CAT scan, a
diagnostic tool used in hospitals worldwide, won him a Nobel Prize, died
Aug. 12 at New Victoria Hospital in Kingston upon Thames, England. He
was 84.

The cause of death was not reported, said Dr. Ken Gray, a friend and
former colleague.

In work that began in the 1960's, Sir Godfrey built a machine that used
X-rays to make three-dimensional images of the body's interior, allowing
doctors a new and cross-sectional view of organs, bones and other
tissues. In the 1970's, CAT-scan technology spread rapidly to hospitals.

"The breakthrough was the realization that by scanning objects at many
angles, it was possible to extract 100 percent of information" from
X-rays, he said in 1973, in an interview with The New York Times.

Sir Godfrey was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine in 1979. He shared the award with Allan M. Cormack, a South
African scientist who worked independently on the concept. Dr. Cormack
died in 1998.

"The CAT scanner revolutionized medical care in the United States and
throughout the world," said Dr. James A. Brink, interim chairman of
diagnostic radiology at the Yale University School of Medicine.

"That's not to say it can do everything, but it is a tool with profound
benefits, a great tool," said Dr. Brink, adding that about 7,000 CAT
scanners were in use nationwide by 2000.

Without a university degree, Sir Godfrey began his research career at
Electrical and Musical Instrument Ltd. in 1951.

After early work on radar and guided weapons systems, he became
interested in computers and led a team that built the first
all-transistor computer in Britain. In the 1960's, Sir Godfrey applied
that knowledge in the development of the scanner, which relied on
powerful computers to assemble its images.

The prototype CAT scanner was designed only to examine the head. Today's
machines can scan the entire body while a patient lies on a moving
table, with an X-ray tube and multiple detectors spiraling around the
body. The Nobel Committee's presentation speech said that before the CAT
scanner, "ordinary X-ray examinations of the head had shown the skull
bones, but the brain had remained a gray, undifferentiated fog."

"Now, suddenly, the fog had cleared."

Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield was born on Aug. 28, 1919, in Newark,
England. The youngest child of a farmer, he recalled, in an
autobiographical sketch he wrote for the Nobel committee, that a rural
and solitary youth "gave me the advantage of not being expected to join
in, so I could go off and follow my own inclinations."

After serving as a radar mechanic instructor in the Royal Air Force, he
received a diploma from the Faraday House Electrical Engineering College
in London.

At Electrical and Musical Instrument, he became head of the medical
systems section for the company's Central Research Laboratories, from
1972 to 1976. He was ultimately made a senior staff scientist and
retired in 1986. He never married.

Sir Godfrey was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1975, and was
knighted in 1981. His name is used to describe the brightness of images
that appear on the CAT scanner. The images are measured in Hounsfield
units.

=======================================

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