The First MRI Scan

Witness History

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2018

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The first magnetic resonance scan of a human body was attempted by Dr Raymond Damadian and two students in 1977. It marked a breakthrough in efforts to develop the medical technology now known as the MRI scanner. MRI uses a powerful magnetic field and radio waves to produce images of the inside of the body. Dr Damadian spoke to Ashley Byrne about his early experiments.

Photo: Drs Raymond Damadian, Lawrence Minkoff and Michael Goldsmith and the completed Indomitable scanner.(Courtesy: FONAR Corporation)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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1:04.7	sounds hello you're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC
1:09.3	World Service I'm Ashley Byrne and today I'm taking you back to 1977 and the moment when the first
1:15.8	magnetic resonance scan of a human torso was attempted, a breakthrough in a worldwide
1:20.9	effort to develop the revolutionary machines we now know as MRIs.
1:26.0	Now doctors will have to learn to look at the body in a completely new way and the reason
1:31.2	a dramatic new way of seeing inside living matter without using x-rays.
1:37.0	Well we put Larry in, we got a signal immediately from his heart and I said, holy smokes, it's actually going to work.
	...

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