The Development of Technology and Its Influence on Nuclear Medicine
by Tess Hughes
1960-69
The integrated circuit or chip was commercially produced in 1961 and used in
'Third Generation Computers' by 1963. Because these computers were smaller and
cheaper, they became obtainable for the small business or hospital, rather than
only for government or research applications. Their cost and size still rendered
them impractical for personal use, however.38
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Also in 1963, Kuhl and Edwards presented the first tomographic images from
detectors mounted around a patient's head, but these were of poor quality and
the technique was not widely accepted.
In the same year, Alan M. Cormack, a nuclear physicist, developed mathematical
algorithms to calculate internal attenuation values. This was also not acknowledged
by the scientific community. 14
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Figure 1015
Alan Cormack
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Figure 11
Construction of a gamma camera.16
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By 1964 the gamma camera had been accepted and was being manufactured commercially.
Marketing competition fuelled development.
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In 1965, Gordon Moore made a prediction that the number of components of an
integrated circuit, would double every year for another decade. This would mean an amazing
65,000 components per chip by 1975. The complexity of the chip actually continued
to double for 30 years until only recently, when it slowed to doubling about every
18 months.17
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Figure 12
Gordon Moore17
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Figure 13
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield19
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Using computers, image reconstruction algorithms were developed for tomography by
Godfrey N. Hounsfield in 1967. These took into account the effects of photon
attenuation and scatter, and increased the target to background ratio. The technique
became known as Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) and greatly
improved images. Both Cormack and Hounsfield were awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine.15
The computer technology of the time, however, still required
many hours to process the image data.9
The significance of computers to imaging was very obvious despite their expense.
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