Medical Imaging and the Human Body
Dr Zbig Sobiesierski
Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning
CardiffUniversity
For most of the history of mankind the main way of obtaining information on human anatomy has come from dissection.
1235 saw the founding of the first medical school in Europe, at Salerno in Italy. Human bodies were dissected in public.
Around 1510 Leonardo da Vinci makes accurate anatomical drawings - although it appears that he may never have been in possession of a complete skeleton.
In 1543 Andreas Vesalius publishes De Humani Corporis (On the Structure of the Human Body). This is the first illustrated printed anatomy.
Unfortunately, Vesalius later receives a death sentence under the Inquisition for his anatomisations of human bodies.
In 1841 a French medic, Dr Auzoux, finds a way for students to study anatomy without having to use real bodies. He considers his papier mache models to be
‘ …instrumental to the students whose repugnance to the dissecting room is difficult to overcome … and to those out of the profession who wish to become acquainted with the mechanism of the human frame’.
Medical imaging as we now know it dates back to the discovery of X-rays by Röntgen, in 1895.
For many years the available technology only allowed static pictures to be taken of the human body. However, by 1955 the development of image intensifiers which increase the sensitivity of X-ray recording allows dynamic imaging, and provides new information on the beating heart and blood vessels.
1970 sees X-ray mammography being used widely to image human breasts.
1972, the development of Computed Tomography (CT) scanning, also know as Computed Axial Tomography (or CAT scan) allows cross-sectional imaging of the body.
By 1977 the nuclear magnetic resonance technique is successfully applied to the human body with the invention of the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. MRI scans provide far greater detail on the composition of the body than was available previously from X-ray images.
Functional MRI (f-MRI) is a recent development that allows for the activity of the brain to be measured as it responds to different stimuli.
The remainder of this presentation used slides taken from the website listed below,
This website on medical physics teaching material for schools supports a teaching pack which has already been circulated to all UK schools. It contains lessons as Powerpoint presentations and other material aimed at helping teachers to teach science. The presentations use examples from medical physics to look at the electromagnetic spectrum, radioactivity and ultrasound.