Research Profile - A Medical Imaging Timeline

1895: German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen takes the first x-ray picture, showing the skeletal composition of his wife's left hand.

1903: Marie Curie and Pierre Curie of France win the Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery of "radioactive" elements radium and polonium (named after her homeland of Poland). They share the prize with Antoine Henri Becquerel "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity."

1924: German psychiatrist Hans Berger develops the first human electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure electrical activity in the brain. (He publishes his first paper on it five years later.)

1934: France's Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie (daughter of Marie) discover artificially produced radioisotopes.

1946: The era of nuclear medicine begins with the use of radioactive iodine to successfully treat thyroid cancer.

1954: The Society of Nuclear Medicine is formed to promote the science, technology and practical application of nuclear medicine. It now has 16,000 members worldwide.

1973: American chemist Paul Lauterbur develops the first magnetic resonance image (MRI) using used nuclear magnetic resonance data and computer calculations of tomography. (Thirty years later he shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Peter Mansfield of the United Kingdom for their pioneering MRI work.)

1974: American Michael Phelps develops the first Positron Emission Tomography camera and the first whole-body system for human and animal studies.

1979: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to American Allan M. Cormack and Godfrey N. Hounsfield of the United Kingdom for the development of computer assisted tomography – CT Scans.

2000: Time Magazine named the PET/CT scanner the medical invention of the year.