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The choice of the two Nobel Laureates has ignited a controversy, however. A full-page ad paid for by Fonar Corp. appeared in the Washington Post, on Oct. 9, three days after this year’s prize was announced, calling it “the shameful wrong that must be righted.” Fonar was founded by Raymond Damadian, who is considered by some to be the original inventor of MRI. In 1970, Damadian discovered that normal and cancerous tissues have markedly different relaxation times in their MR signals. That finding, which was published more than 30 years ago [Science, 171, 1151 (1971)], formed the basis for subsequent work on MRI. According to Fonar Communications Director Daniel Culver, the company was “stunned” that the Nobel Prize was awarded for MRI without recognizing Damadian’s discovery. Damadian received the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 and the National Medal of Technology in 1988 (with Lauterbur), and he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989 for his role in the invention of MRI. Hans Jornvall, secretary of the Nobel Prize selection committee at the Karolinska Institute, tells C&EN that the committee never comments on people not selected for the prize. Lauterbur and Mansfield helped turn MRI into a practical technique. In the early 1970s, Lauterbur, then a professor at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, realized that two-dimensional images could be generated by introducing gradients into the magnetic field, so that different tissues are exposed to different magnetic field strengths. Working separately, Mansfield advanced the field by showing how the signals could be mathematically analyzed and transformed into an image. In addition, Mansfield showed how rapid imaging could be achieved by using fast gradient variations. MRI quickly found its way into clinical use. Commercial systems were available by the early 1980s. |
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