Word: x-rays
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This kind of delicate research requires an extensive array of specialized equipment. The four laboratories that house the Center for Conservation are filled with elaborate scientific machinery for work through microscopy, X-ray defraction and thermoluminescence...
...ways to see through skin and bone and into the whirring processes of life. The discovery of the X ray in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen opened the first window into the living body and inaugurated a new age in medicine. But anyone who has ever glanced at an X-ray film can perceive its Limitations. The picture gives little sense of depth, and while bones show up crisply enough, many of the softer tissues of the body are fuzzy shadows in shades of gray...
...years ago, doctors began to see more detail with a new kind of X-ray machine that uses a 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...
...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...
...physicians' greatest fear was that Clark had suffered a stroke. To check, they ordered sophisticated X-ray images of the brain and heart, using a CAT (computerized axial tomography) scanner. In Clark's case, this proved to be a major undertaking. The scanner is on the first floor, and Clark is tethered by two 6-ft. tubes to 375 Ibs. of equipment that powers his heart and is in turn plugged into outlets for electricity and compressed air. Clark had to be switched to an auxiliary battery and air-supply system that allows temporary mobility. Then...