Godfrey Hounsfield

Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield (28 August 1919 - 12 August 2004) was an English electrical engineer who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Allan McLeod Cormack for his part in developing the diagnostic technique of computerized axial tomography (CAT).

Research

While on an outing in the country, Hounsfield came up with the idea that one could determine what was inside a box by taking X-ray readings at all angles around the object. He then set to work constructing a computer that could take input from X-rays at various angles to create an image of the object in "slices". Applying this possibility to the medical field led him to propose what is now known as computerized axial tomography. At the time, Hounsfield was not aware of the work that Cormack had done on the theoretical mathematics for such a device. Hounsfield built the prototype head scanner and tested it first on a preserved human brain, then on a fresh cow brain from a butcher shop, and later on himself. In 1972, CAT scanning was introduced into medical practice with a successful scan on a cerebral cyst patient at Atkinson Morley's Hospital in Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom. In 1975, Hounsfield built a whole-body scanner.

Related Topics:
X-ray - Human brain - Brain - 1972 - Medical practice - Cyst - Wimbledon, London - United Kingdom - 1975

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