Raymond Damadian facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Raymond Damadian
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Raymond Vahan Damadian
March 16, 1936 New York City, New York, U.S.
|
| Died | August 3, 2022 (aged 86) Woodbury, New York, U.S.
|
| Alma mater |
|
| Known for | Inventor of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) |
Raymond Vahan Damadian (March 16, 1936 – August 3, 2022) was an American doctor and inventor. He is famous for inventing the first MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanning machine.
Damadian studied how different parts of the body, like healthy tissues and tumors (growths), reacted to a special scientific method called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). He found that tumors and normal tissues could be told apart using NMR. This was because they had different "relaxation times," which is how quickly their atoms return to normal after being affected by a magnetic field.
In 1969, Damadian suggested that this NMR method could be used to scan the human body. He was the first to perform a full-body scan of a human in 1977. This scan helped to find cancer. Damadian created a safe and accurate way to scan the human body using NMR. This method is now known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Damadian received many awards for his work. In 2001, he won the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award. He was called "the man who invented the MRI scanner." He also worked with Wilson Greatbach, who helped create the pacemaker, to make an MRI-safe pacemaker. The Franklin Institute gave him the Bower Award in Business Leadership. He also received a National Medal of Technology in 1988 and was added to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989.
Contents
Biography
Early life and education
Raymond Damadian was born in New York City. His family was of Armenian and French background. He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1956. Then, he received his medical degree (M.D.) from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City in 1960.
Damadian also studied the violin at Juilliard for eight years. He played tennis in Junior Davis Cup competitions. He met his future wife, Donna Terry, while working as a tennis coach. They married a year after he finished medical school and had three children. Raymond became interested in finding cancer when he was 10 years old. He saw his grandmother, whom he was very close to, suffer and die from breast cancer.
Developing MRI technology
Damadian's early research used NMR to study potassium inside cells. He found that potassium in cells behaved differently than potassium in water. This suggested that potassium was connected to other parts of the cell.
He and other scientists also looked at the signals from hydrogen atoms in cells. They found that these signals were different from those in pure water. Damadian thought that cancerous cells would have even longer "relaxation times." This was because cancer cells are more disorganized and have higher levels of potassium.
In 1971, Damadian published a paper in the journal Science. He reported that tumors could be found in living bodies using NMR. This was because tumors had much longer relaxation times than normal tissue. He believed these differences could help find cancer early. This would make it easier to treat.
In 1974, Damadian received the first patent for MRI. This patent covered the idea of using NMR to "scan" the human body to find cancerous tissue. However, it did not explain how to create pictures from such a scan. Still, Damadian's discovery that NMR relaxation times could show differences between tissue types was very important. It gave MRI its ability to show contrast between different body parts.
In the 1950s, Herman Carr had already made a simple one-dimensional MR image. After Damadian's report, Paul Lauterbur improved Carr's method. He found a way to create the first 2D and 3D MRI images using special magnetic fields called gradients. Peter Mansfield then developed a mathematical technique. This technique allowed scans to be done in seconds instead of hours and made images clearer.
While Lauterbur and Mansfield focused on animals and human limbs, Damadian built the first full-body MRI machine. He performed the first full magnetic resonance imaging ("MRI") scan of a human body. His method was called "focused field" and was different from modern imaging.
Damadian's early methods were not perfect for everyday use. They involved scanning the body point-by-point. However, his discovery of differences in relaxation times in cancerous tissue was a huge step forward. It showed that MRI could be used to see soft tissues in the body. X-ray imaging was not good for soft tissues because they looked too similar. Today, most MRI scans still rely on these relaxation time differences to create detailed images.
First human MRI body scan
On July 3, 1977, the first MRI body scan was done on a human. It took almost five hours to create just one image. This image was a detailed scan of Larry Minkoff's thorax (chest area). The images were very basic compared to what we see today. Damadian, along with his colleagues Larry Minkoff and Michael Goldsmith, worked for seven years to reach this point. They called their first machine "Indomitable." This name showed their strong will to do something many people said was impossible.
Damadian had suggested using NMR to scan for internal cancers in 1969. He wrote:
- I am very much interested in the potential of NMR spectroscopy for early non-destructive detection of internal malignancies. … I will make every effort myself, and through collaborators, to establish that all tumors can be recognized by their potassium relaxation times or H2O-proton spectra and proceed with the development of instrumentation and probes that can be used to scan the human body externally for early signs of malignancy. Detection of internal tumors during the earliest states of their genesis should bring us very close to the total eradication of the disease.
In his 1971 Science paper, Damadian showed different NMR signals for tumors and different tissue types. He wrote:
- In principle, nuclear magnetic resonance [NMR] techniques combine many of the desirable features of an external probe for the detection of internal cancer.
This work influenced others. Lauterbur later wrote in 1986 that Damadian's report on long water proton relaxation times in animal tumors caught the attention of the medical community. He also noted that even normal tissues had different NMR relaxation times. This made him wonder if there was a way to map these differences inside the body without surgery.
So, it was Damadian's discovery of these different relaxation times that led to Lauterbur's idea of showing them as an image. Without these differences, which Damadian found, there would be nothing to create an image with.
A book about MRI history highlighted the importance of both Damadian and Lauterbur:
- Because of the contributions of Dr. Raymond Damadian and Dr. Paul Lauterbur, magnetic resonance imaging has become the most powerful and reliable diagnostic tool in medicine. … Millions of people the world over enjoy a higher quality of life and many lives have been saved, thanks to the contributions of Damadian and Lauterbur.
The book explained that MRI came from two main steps. Damadian provided the first step: discovering that tissue NMR signals were different. This showed that an NMR scanner could find diseases in the human body. Lauterbur provided the next step: finding a way to turn these signal differences into an image quickly. Both scientists were crucial for MRI to exist.
In 1988, the President of the United States awarded the National Medal of Technology jointly to Dr. Damadian and Dr. Lauterbur. President Ronald Reagan honored them for their independent contributions to developing magnetic resonance technology for medical uses, including whole-body scanning and diagnostic imaging.
Damadian's original MRI machine is now in the Smithsonian Institution. In 1982, there were only a few MRI scanners in the United States. Today, there are thousands.
Fonar Corporation
In 1978, Damadian started his own company, Fonar. The name stood for "Field Focused Nuclear Magnetic Resonance." Fonar's goal was to make MRI scanners. In 1980, the company produced the first commercial MRI machine.
Damadian's "focused field" technology was not as fast or efficient as Lauterbur's method. His scanner, named "Indomitable," did not sell well. Fonar eventually stopped using Damadian's original technique and adopted the methods developed by Lauterbur and Mansfield.
Damadian and Fonar protected their patents. They reached agreements with many large companies. However, a court case against General Electric went to the Federal Circuit court. The court upheld a $129 million ruling against GE for using Damadian's patents without permission. Damadian said that all the money from this judgment was put back into Fonar for research and development.
Damadian was the company's largest shareholder. He later worked with Wilson Greatbatch to create an MRI-compatible pacemaker. He also invented a stand-up MRI system. Fonar has 15 MRI scanning centers across the United States. Many other independent MRI centers around the world use this technology. In 2007, the company's Upright Multi-Positional MRI was named "Invention of the Year" by the Intellectual Properties Owners Association Education Foundation.
Death
Raymond Damadian passed away on August 3, 2022, at the age of 86.
Awards and honors
Damadian received a National Medal of Technology in 1988. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989. His original MRI full-body scanner was given to the Smithsonian Institution in the 1980s. It is now on display at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Ohio. In 2001, the Lemelson-MIT Prize Program gave him its $100,000 Lifetime Achievement Award. They called him "the man who invented the MRI scanner."
The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia recognized Damadian's work on MRI with the Bower Award in Business Leadership. He was named the Knights of Vartan 2003 "Man of the Year." In September 2003, he received the Innovation Award in Bioscience from The Economist magazine.
Nobel Prize discussion
In 2003, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was given to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for their discoveries related to MRI. Even though Nobel rules allow up to three winners, Damadian was not included. There had been a long-running debate about who played what part in developing MRI before the Nobel announcement. Many in the science community felt the Nobel Prize had not been given for MRI for so long because of this debate over Damadian's role.
Damadian believed he should get credit first, then Lauterbur. Lauterbur felt only he should get credit. In 1997, the National Academy of Sciences created a timeline of MRI milestones. Four of the 12 initial milestones were given to Damadian. But in the final version published in 2001, none were attributed to him. The text said Damadian's methods had "not proved clinically reliable in detecting or diagnosing cancer." After Damadian's lawyers sent a letter, the text on the NAS website was changed, but Damadian was still not satisfied. Damadian said in 2002, "If I had not been born, would MRI have existed? I don't think so. If Lauterbur had not been born? I would have gotten there. Eventually."
The New York Times wrote about the situation:
The issue has been the subject of a dispute between Dr. Damadian and Dr. Lauterbur and has been known for years in academic circles, with some fearing that the Nobel committee would steer clear of magnetic resonance imaging altogether because of the Swedes' supposed distaste for controversial discoveries. Dr. Lauterbur, 74, is not in good health, and the committee may have decided that its prize, which cannot be given posthumously, needed to be awarded for the discovery now or never.
After Lauterbur and Mansfield won the Nobel, a group called "The Friends of Raymond Damadian" (formed by Damadian's company FONAR) placed full-page advertisements in major newspapers. These included The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and a large Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter. The ads protested his exclusion with the headline "The Shameful Wrong That Must Be Righted." They hoped the Nobel Committee would change its mind.
Damadian suggested that Lauterbur and Mansfield should have refused the Nobel Prize unless Damadian was also recognized. Several MRI experts supported Damadian. Others pointed out that while Damadian thought NMR relaxation times could find cancer, he did not develop the current way of creating images. Since the Nobel Prize was given for the development of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Damadian's exclusion made sense to some.
Chemist George Kauffman argued that Damadian deserved the Nobel:
Undoubtedly, both Damadian and Lauterbur made major contributions to MRI imaging and scanning. Without Damadian's relaxation discoveries that showed sharp discrimination between tissues and particularly a serious disease like cancer, there would have been no reason to entertain or even consider a method for displaying the relaxation differences so that they could be visualized as an image. Furthermore, except for the relaxation differences discovered by Damadian, there would be no reason to expect that such an image would show anything, i.e., that any tissue NMR contrast existed with which to make an image.
Science and technology are two distinctly different enterprises. Science is the branch of knowledge dedicated to compiling factual information and understanding natural phenomena. It precedes technology, and technology cannot advance without it. Without science's new knowledge of natural phenomena, technology's new methods for exploiting and taking advantage of nature's secrets cannot be created. The new scientific information is necessarily the first step.
Moreover, there is no doubt that Damadian's seminal discovery preceded Lauterbur's developments.
See also
In Spanish: Raymond Damadian para niños
