From a different angle: 50 years of cerebral computed tomography

Fifty years ago, on 1 October 1971, CT was first adopted into clinical practice. The patient was a 41-year-old female with a suspected frontal lobe tumour, admitted to the Atkinson Morley Hospital in London. Neuroradiologist James Ambrose (1923-2006) carefully placed the patient's head in a tumble-dryer-like de- vice containing a rotating X-ray source opposing two detectors (Fig. 1). The imaging process took about 20 min, in which a narrow beam of X-rays was transmitted through the patient's head from 180 different angles in several axial planes. Following 2 days of computerized data processing, a series of cross-sectional images were reconstructed, which clearly depicted a lesion in the patient's frontal lobe. This finding caused Ambrose and Godfrey Hounsfield (1919-2004), the inventor of the novel imaging technique, 'to jump up and down like football players who had just scored a winning goal'.(1)

Automated summary

The CT technology was first adopted into clinical practice fifty years ago, successfully detecting a lesion in a patient's frontal lobe through a rotating X-ray source. Neuroradiologist James Ambrose and the inventor Godfrey Hounsfield were excited about this discovery.