# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Skip to main content

X-rays must have been amazing to the first people who saw them. With photography still being relatively new, and moving pictures having just been developed, the chance to utilize a new type of technology to see within a living human must have been as fascinating then as it is commonplace now. While it took a while for X-ray's medical applications to be known, today, X-rays and similar imaging techniques are the most valuable tools doctors have for diagnosing patients. The next time you have an appointment for diagnostic imaging in Suffolk County, NY, here are some facts to consider regarding the history and future of X-ray technology.

The Birth of X-Rays

In 1885, University of Würzburg physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was studying electron beams within a gas discharge tube. Upon turning on the tube, he noticed a nearby fluorescent screen would glow. Realizing this meant that the rays within the tube were able to penetrate some types of solid matter, he put his hand between the tube and screen, and saw that his bones were projected onto the screen. He would publish a paper called "On a New Kind of Rays" where he included images of his wife's hand, a compass, a weight, and some pieces of metal. And with that, X-ray imaging was born.

Popular Imagination

Very quickly, the use of X-rays captured the public's fascination. People would pay to look at their skeletons at carnivals through a fluoroscope: a machine which could show live, moving X-ray images. Fluoroscopes were even used to draw women to shoe stores where they could see their foot bones within their new shoes. Of course, the practitioners of the time had no understanding yet of the dangers of un-shielded radiation, and X-ray exhibitions lost their appeal as those who were running the machines started to lose fingers and even their lives. Even Thomas Edison swore off ever tinkering with X-ray machines again after losing his assistant to cancer.

Medical Applications

Until X-rays came along, the only way to find a bullet or shrapnel in the human body was by the surgeon feeling around. Quickly, military doctors realized the life-saving potential X-rays had to offer. By the 1930s, with new understandings of how to protect patients and staff from their adverse effects, X-rays became an essential part of patient diagnostics. By the 1970s, X-rays began transitioning to digital imaging, saving time, money, and storage space.

X-Rays Today and in the Future

Today, X-rays are a safe and reliable means of treating injuries and diagnosing cancer and other illnesses. Their increased use in the developing world is saving lives across all of Africa and Asia. Also, in the last couple of years, digital X-ray imaging has been playing a greater role in aiding the diagnosis of pneumonia, an illness which kills over a million children under the age of five every year.

The X-ray's development from an entertainment tool of the 19th century to one of the safest and most reliable means of treating a patient is all a part of the medical advances that benefit all of us. It's due to the brave and brilliant actions of all the men and women who advanced X-rays' life-saving potential that you're able to take advantage of those benefits when you undergo advanced diagnostic imaging in Suffolk County, NY.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
X-Ray Technology: The Past, Present, and Future

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
X-rays must have been amazing to the first people who saw them. With photography still being relatively new, and moving pictures having just been developed, the chance to utilize a new type of technology to see within a living human must have been as fascinating then as it is commonplace now.

# data[].attributes.headline
First live MRI body scan on human preformed

# data[].attributes.subject
First live MRI body scan on human preformed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
July, 1977: MRI Uses Fundamental Physics for Clinical Diagnosis

I. I. Rabi

On July 3, 1977, the first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exam on a live human patient was performed. MRI, which identifies atoms by how they behave in a magnetic field, has become an extremely useful non-invasive method for imagining internal bodily structures and diagnosing disease. The life-saving medical technique has its foundations in the work of physicist I. I. Rabi, who during the 1930s developed a method of measuring magnetic properties of atomic nuclei.

Isidor Isaac Rabi was born on July 29, 1898 in Rymanow, Austria. In 1899 his family moved to New York, where they lived in poverty in the Lower East Side before moving to Brooklyn in 1907. Rabi's parents were Orthodox Jews, and though Rabi never practiced religion as an adult, he was always influenced by his religious upbringing. He felt that doing good physics was "walking the path of God."

Rabi graduated from Cornell University in 1919 with a degree in chemistry. But he wasn't really captivated by chemistry, and spent three years not doing much of anything before deciding to go to graduate school in physics at Cornell. After finishing his PhD in 1927, Rabi went to Europe, where he spent time working with the giants of quantum mechanics, including Sommerfeld, Bohr, Pauli, Stern, and Heisenberg.

Rabi was fascinated by quantum ideas, especially the Stern-Gerlach experiment. Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach had sent a thin beam of silver atoms through a non-uniform strong magnetic field, and observed that the beam separated into two distinct sub-beams, the atoms in the beam having been deflected slightly according to the direction of their magnetic moments.

When Rabi returned to the United States in 1929, he took a teaching position at Columbia University. After spending two years searching for a problem that interested him, in 1931 Rabi set up his molecular beam lab and took up the problem of determining the nuclear spin and associated magnetic moment of sodium. The nuclear magnetic moment, much smaller than that of the electron, was difficult to determine precisely. Rabi and Gregory Breit figured out how to modify the classic Stern-Gerlach apparatus to find the nuclear spin of sodium.

Rabi, who was often viewed as lazy, was always impatient with routine experimental techniques and data analysis. He liked to say he wanted an answer at the end of the day, and was driven to design clever, clean experimental methods, methods that brought him "nearer to God."

Throughout the 1930s, Rabi improved the molecular beam method and used it to gather increasingly accurate values for the nuclear spin of atoms, including hydrogen and deuterium. The work culminated in the magnetic resonance method which is the basis for magnetic resonance imaging.

Magnetic moments tend to align either parallel or antiparallel to an external magnetic field, and tend to behave somewhat like tops, precessing about the direction of the magnetic field, with a frequency that depends on the magnetic field strength and the atom's nuclear magnetic moment. In 1937 Rabi predicted that the magnetic moments of nuclei in these experiments could be induced to flip their orientation if they absorbed energy from an electromagnetic wave of the right frequency. They would also emit this amount of energy in falling back to the lower energy orientation. Rabi would be able to detect this transition from one state to the other. He called his method molecular beam magnetic resonance.

MRI Image

Rabi and his team modified the molecular beam apparatus so the beam was also exposed to a radio frequency signal as it traveled through the magnetic field. Tuning either the external magnetic field or the radio frequency can produce resonance. They observed the first magnetic resonance absorption in 1938, with beam of lithium chloride molecules. Rabi was enthralled by the flopping of the magnetic moment, and the group held a party to celebrate the achievement.

Each atom or molecule has a characteristic pattern of resonance frequencies. Rabi detected a series of resonances in different molecules that could be used to identify the type of atom or molecule and give more detail into molecular structure.

After World War II broke out, Rabi left his molecular beam laboratory and went on to become Associate Director of the MIT Radiation Laboratory. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1944, "for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei."

In 1946 Edward Purcell and Felix Bloch independently found a way to study the magnetic resonance properties of atoms and molecules in solids and liquids, instead of individual atoms or molecules as in Rabi's molecular beam method. Later, nuclear magnetic resonance was further developed into the imaging technique that is now commonly used for medical diagnosis. The first images were produced in the early 1970s, and the first live human subject was imaged in 1977. MRI machines became commercially available in the 1980s, and are now commonly used for imaging internal body structures, especially soft tissues like the brain.

Shortly before he died in January of 1988, Rabi was imaged in an MRI machine. "It was eerie. I saw myself in that machine," he said. "I never thought my work would come to this."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
July, 1977: MRI Uses Fundamental Physics for Clinical Diagnosis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On July 3, 1977, the first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exam on a live human patient was performed. MRI, which identifies atoms by how they behave in a magnetic field, has become an extremely useful non-invasive method for imagining internal bodily structures and diagnosing disease.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1930s/ 1940s Woman has X-ray, Doctors, Skeleton

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the early days, while American workers were busily exploring and reporting the beneficial use of X-rays, less welcome news was beginning to trickle in from many parts of the USA. The rays, it was discovered, produced undesirable changes in exposed tissues. In the 116th anniversary year of the discovery of X-rays, when Roentgen and others were glorified for their discovery and use of X-rays, this article throws light on some of the early victims and martyrs. Given the ambiguity of universal guidelines in obtaining a cone beam CT (CBCT) scan and the undue use of panoramic and full-mouth periapicals at tertiary care centres, oral radiologists may end up making unnecessary examinations, which can result in undue radiation exposure. This highlights the need to look back through history.

Historical perspective

It was barely 14 days after the announcement of the discovery of Roentgen rays that Friedrich Otto Walkhoff took the first dental radiograph. He took an ordinary photographic glass plate, wrapped it in a rubber dam, held it in his mouth between his teeth and tongue and then lay on the floor for a 25 min exposure. Walkhoff said that those 25 min of exposure were a torture to him. However, the exact nature of this torture has not been described. Later, in 1896, Walkhoff succeeded in making extra-oral pictures with an exposure time of 30 min. He noticed a loss of hair on the side of the head of some of the patients he irradiated, but as there was no mention of blisters on the skin it is assumed that the absorbed dose was less than 300 rads.

In 1896, Otto Walkhoff and Fritz Giesel established the first dental roentgenological laboratory in the world. For many years the laboratory provided practitioners with images of the jaw and head. Fritz Giesel later died in 1927 of metastatic carcinoma caused by heavy radiation exposure to his hands.

In February 1896 a child who had been accidentally shot in the head was brought to the laboratory at Vanderbilt University (Tennessee, USA). Before attempting to locate the bullet in the child, Professor Daniel and Dr Dudley decided to undertake an experiment. Dr Dudley, with his characteristic devotion to science, lent himself to this experiment. A plate holder containing the sensitive plate was tied to one side of Dudley's head and the tube attached to the opposite side of the head. The tube was placed 0.5 inches away from Dudley's hair and activated for 1 h. After 21 days all the hair fell out from the space under discharge, which was approximately 2 inches in diameter.

On 12 August 1896, Electrical Review reported that Dr HD Hawks, a graduate of the 1896 class of Columbia College, gave a demonstration with a powerful X-ray unit in the vicinity of New York. After 4 days, he was compelled to stop work. He noticed a drying of the skin, which he ignored. The hand began to swell and gave the appearance of a deep skin burn. After 2 weeks the skin came off the hand, the knuckles become very sore, fingernail growth stopped and the hair on the skin exposed to X-rays fell out. His eyes were bloodshot and his vision became considerably impaired. His chest was also burnt. Mr Hawks' physician treated this as a case of dermatitis. Hawks tried protecting his hands with petroleum jelly, then gloves and finally by covering it with tin foil. Within 6 weeks Hawks was partially recovered and was making light of his injuries. Electrical Review concluded by asking to hear from any of its readers who had had similar experiences.

GA Frei of Frei and Co., a Boston manufacturer of X-ray tubes, replied the next day: Mr K, an employee of the company, complained of peculiar itching and burning in his left hand and thought it was due to poisoning with chemicals. Mr K used to regularly attend to testing of tubes during and after the exhausting process at the rooms. The same phenomenon also appeared on Frei's hand. The letter concluded by stating that further developments would be carefully monitored.

A distressing case was reported in September 1896. William Levy had been shot in the head by an escaping bank robber 10 years previously. The bullet entered his skull just above the left ear and presumably proceeded towards the back of the head. Having heard about X-rays, he decided he wanted the bullet localized and extracted. Levy approached Professor Jones of the Physical Laboratory, University of Minnesota. Professor Jones, who was familiar with Daniel and Dudley's experiments, warned Levy against the exposure, but Levy was undeterred and an exposure was made on 8 July 1896. Exposures were made with the tube over his forehead, in front of his open mouth and behind his right ear. Levy sat through the exposures from 8 o'clock in the morning until 10 o'clock at night. Within 24 h his entire head was blistered, within a few days his head was an angry sore and his lips were badly swollen, cracked and bleeding. His right ear had doubled in size and the hair on his right side had entirely fallen out. Professor Jones concluded that the one feature that was satisfactory to the patient was that a good picture of the bullet was obtained, showing it to be about an inch beneath the skull under the occipital protuberance.

Dr Stickney reported a case in December 1896 of a woman who complained of abdominal pain. A radiograph of the patient, Mrs Q, was taken in the abdominal region. The focus of X-rays was over the liver. 3 exposures were made of 20 min, 30 min and 35 min. Two days later she developed burns over the region. The condition worsened until the surface sloughed.

The above cases of Hawks, Dudley and Stickney all reported skin blisters and it could therefore be assumed that the absorbed dose of the victims was at least 1500 rads. Serious damage from the rays was also reported from the Edison Laboratory. Elihu Thomson of General Electric cited two Edison cases in a letter dated 1 December 1896 to Dr EA Codman of Boston. Thomson referred to these cases as serious because they took place over the hands and arms of the victims and they had to stop working with X-rays altogether. The story goes that one of them was told by his physician that if he continued to work with X-rays it would be necessary to amputate his hands. The worker threatened with amputation was probably Clarence Dally, Thomson Edison's glassblower.

Clarence Dally was likely to have had an absorbed dose of approximately 3000 rads to necessitate amputation. It needs to be noted that not everyone had the same experience. Dr Williams reported in 1897 that in approximately 250 patients, who he examined with X-rays, he had not seen any harmful effects.

Professor Stine of Armour Institute of Technology reported that a patient who was exposed for 2 h for 2 successive days with the plate a few inches from the skin developed itching and irritation. A few days later the skin swelled and became inflamed, and the area immediately surrounding the exposure was tanned and dry. In time the skin peeled off and resembled bad sunburn. Professor Stine, however, concluded that the effect was due to ultraviolet rays and not X-rays.

Dr EA Codman, in 1902, conscientiously reviewed all papers on X-ray injuries. Of the 88 X-ray injuries published, 55 had occurred in 1896, 12 in 1897, 6 in 1898, 9 in 1899, 3 in 1900 and 1 in 1901. The decline could be due to the fact that X-ray injuries were no longer in the news and therefore went unreported unless they exhibited unusual features.

Clarence Dally (1865-1904) is thought to be the first to die as result of X-ray exposure. He died of metastatic carcinoma at only 39 years old.

The next death to be reported was that of Elizabeth F Ascheim (1859-1905) of San Francisco. Deaths reported thereafter included those of Wolfram C Fuchs (1865-1907), who opened the X-ray laboratory in Chicago in 1896 and made the first X-ray film of a brain tumour in 1899, and Dr William Carl Egelhoff (1872-1907). Among the victims who suffered the most was Dr Walter James Dodd (1869-1916). He was operated on 32 times and died of metastatic carcinoma of the lung on 18 December 1916.

The deaths of tube manufacturers have included Rome Vernon Wagner (1869-1908), his brother Thurman Lester Wagner (1876-1912), Burton Eugene Baker (1871-1913), Henry Green (1860-1914), John Bawer (unknown year of birth-1908) and Robert H Machlett (1872-1926).

The case of C. Edmund Kells is well known. Kells developed a radiogenic neoplasm in 1922 and endured increasing discomfort and excruciating pain. Kells did not listen to the warning given by William Rollins regarding radiation hazards. He had undergone 42 operations and several amputations (some have reported 100). On 7 May 1928 Kells triggered a 0.32 calibre bullet into his brain.

Dr Perry Brown, an eminent Boston radiologist, published his collection of biological essays "American martyrs to science through Roentgen rays" in 1936. He reported the deaths of Mihran Kasabian of Philadelphia (1870-1910), Eugene Caldwell of New York (1870-1918), Herbert Robert of St Louis (1852-1922), Fredrick H Baetjer of Baltimore (1874-1933) and a number of others whose lives deserve to be remembered. However, his own story was missing; Dr Brown died of X-ray induced cancer in 1950.

Dr Cannon began using X-rays in 1896 when he was a medical student. In 1931 he developed itching of skin and fresh red papular lesions on his back, chest, thighs, knees and elbows. Dr Cannon suggested that repeated biopsies be made so that it would provide more information on this poorly understood condition. He developed several lesions all over the body, many of which continuously recurred.

In April 1944, a recurrent basal cell carcinoma of the nostril was excised. In 1945 he passed the 14 th anniversary of the onset of mycosis fungoidosis - an amazingly long survival. On 1 October 1945 he died of recurrent pulmonary infection.

It would be generous to accept Dr Grubbe's account precisely as he wrote it, for he truly was an X-ray martyr. Dr Grubbe suffered at least 83 surgical operations to relieve his discomfort and to stop the progress of gangrene from his left hand to his arm, elbow and finally shoulder. Grubbe's face was grossly disfigured with cancer. He became sterile. His marriage was left childless, a misfortune he attributed to the X-rays. He lived in agony for many years, yet he continued to work with the rays.

In his autobiography he maintained "my courage is my work. I treat patients who suffer more or are encumbered more than me, and so I go on. By helping others I help myself". He went on to predict "I will die from the effects of early uncontrolled exposures to X-rays. And like many of the early pioneers, I too, will die a victim of natural science, a martyr to the X-rays."

Dr Grubbe, in the chapter "The effect of the X-rays on author's body", concluded on a noble note: "I have lived large enough to see the child that I fathered develop into a sturdy, mature and worthwhile product; and I hope as I approach the evening of my day, to see even more uses of X-ray energy in the alleviation of the ills of mankind." Dr. Grubbe died of metastatic cancer on 26 March 1960. It could be hypothesized that Kells and Grubbe had a consistent absorbed dose of 3000 rads.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Early victims of X-rays: a tribute and current perception

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
X-rays were discovered in 1895 and since then much has been written about Wilhelm Roentgen and the events surrounding the discovery. However, there have been only scattered references in the literature about the early workers who dedicated their life, ...