Word: nmr
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Swiss-born U.S. physicist who shared the 1952 Nobel Prize with American Edward Purcell for the study of nuclear magnetic resonance, a method of measuring the frequencies of signals emitted by atomic nuclei under the influence of radio waves in an electromagnetic field; of a heart attack; in Zurich. NMR has revolutionized medical science as a diagnostic method without the ionizing radiation of CAT-scan X rays or painful injections of contrast material...
...computer to construct clear, cross-sectional views of the body. The CAT scanner (for Computerized Axial Tomography) revolutionized radiology. But now that virtually every large hospital in the country has invested in one, at about a million dollars apiece, another revolution is under way: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, or NMR. Currently being studied for approval by the Food and Drug Administration, the new technology is in experimental use at about half a dozen top U.S. medical centers as well as several overseas...
...NMR exposes the internal landscape as never before. "Its development," says British Radiologist Brian Worthington of the University of Nottingham, "is as significant as the development of the X-ray machine one hundred years ago." Unlike CAT and other forms of X ray, NMR can "see" with clarity through the thickest of bones. Thus, without painful injections of contrast material, it can reveal damage from a stroke buried deep beneath the skull, find tiny spinal cord injuries, and make it possible to differentiate the gray and white matter of the brain. "For the soft tissue of the body," says Worthington...
...revelations offered by NMR go beyond anatomical topography. Not only can doctors see internal organs, they can actually monitor certain processes occurring within them: blood moving through an artery, an arthritis-inflamed knee shrinking in response to steroid treatment, the reaction of a malignant tumor to therapy. "NMR opens up the whole wonderful world of in vivo chemistry," exclaims Neuroradiologist Sadek Hilal, who is testing the new technique at New York City's Presbyterian Hospital...
What makes NMR'S revelations even more remarkable is that they are produced without the ionizing radiation of X rays. In significant doses, X radiation can damage cells and may be a factor in causing cancer; it may be particularly dangerous to the rapidly dividing cells of children and pregnant women. NMR, by contrast, appears to be harmless. "We can look at the developing brain of an infant easily and safely," says Dr. Robert Steiner of London's Hammersmith Hospital...