This area Celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first clinical CT scan of a Patient on 1st October 1971.
It is difficult for anyone today to realise what imaging and diagnosis was like 50 years ago.
In the 1960s imaging was largely x-ray film based and diagnosis depended largely upon the skill and interpretation of the radiologist. Relatively little had changed since the original discovery of X-rays by Roentgen in 1895, until the early 1970s.
The first clinical CT scan of a patient was taken on 1 October 1971 at Atkinson Morley Hospital, in Wimbledon, South London. The first patient image scan 200.2A showed a circular cystic tumour in the frontal lobe. The surgeon who subsequently operated on this patient reported that the tumour was exactly where it was shown on the first scan.
Little did anyone realise at the time just how much of an impact the invention of CT scanning would have on the Medical Imaging world and on all of Medicine and Surgery.
Liz Beckmann
Chair BSHR
VIDEOS
Godfrey Hounsfield on the early years
Jamie Ambrose - the Unsung Hero of CT
PDFs
