MRVector Newsletter American Registry of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists Phone: 718-347-8690 Fax: 718-347-8691 E-mail: [email protected] www.armrit.org Raymond V. Damadian, MRI Imaging Machine Summer/Fall Issu e 2010 Inventor - Keynote Speaker Vol. XVI No. 2 ARMRIT 5th Annual Meeting in Las Vegas Inside this issue: New York, NY. Dr. Raymond Damadian Oregon to License MRI Raymond V. The American Registry of The “Henry Ford” of MRI Includes ARMRIT Damadian Speaks @ MRI Technologists is proud (reprint from previous issues) Certification ARMRIT 2010 to announced that Raymond Long Island, New York Portland, Oregon V. Damadian the inventor of When Raymond Damadian Oregon Board of Damadian - The “Henry Ford” of MRI the MRI scanner and the first was a boy, he lost his Medical Imaging to perform a total body MRI Grandmother to a slow death (formerly OBRT) has Oregon Licenses MRI by cancer. This loss affected ARMRIT Included scan of the human body in included ARMRIT 1977 has accepted the him greatly. Young certification as a West Virginia ARMRIT invitation to be its Damadian vowed to find a requirement to be eligible Licenses MRI, keynote speaker at its 5th way to detect this dreaded for a Medical Imaging ARMRIT Included Annual meeting and seminar. disease in its early stages, Technologist License to and still treatable, so that ARMRIT 2010 The meeting will be held on practice MRI Technology. th others could be saved. Thus, 5 Annual Meeting & October 21-23, 2010 at the To view the first Oregon Seminar a lifetime goal was set at an elegant Stirling Club in the licenses awarded to Turnberry Towers complex early age. ARMRIT certified MRI CMS Requirements on Paradise Road, in Las Of Armenian descent, Techs see page 5. for January 2012 Damadian grew up in Forest Vegas, Nevada. (Cont. on page 3) CME requirement Dr. Damadian is a native Hills, New York. In his New Yorker, graduated from childhood years Damadian West Virginia Medical Albert Einstein School of attended the Julliard School Imaging and Radiation ARMRIT 2010: and became very proficient Medicine in Bronx, New TherapyCaption Technology describing 5th Annual Meeting & York, did his MRI research at playing the violin. He also Board pictureof Examiners or graphic. Seminar Downstate Medical Center, in played tennis and won many Wheeling, WV Oct. 21-23 Brooklyn, New York, junior championships. Prior to Oregon, West established and located his Damadian was introduced Virginia has included Stirling Club company at Melville, New to NMR by Edward Purcell ARMRIT certification as a @Turnberry Place York where he lives. at Harvard University when requirement for a license to Las Vegas, Nevada The title of his lecture is Purcell drew an NMR practice MRI Technology. "The History and Genesis of spectrum on a blackboard as For Accommodations: MRI, A Machine Called part of a course he was Centers for Medicare @ the World Famous Indomitable". The Registry teaching. This subject and Medicaid Services Las Vegas Hilton has already received sparked Damadian’s interest (CMS) has established thru September 21, 2010: numerous inquiries from its immediately. accreditation requirements certified techs that if he is in After a tour of duty in for providers of advanced Call Directly: 800-635-7711 fact coming to the meeting military service and medical medical imaging mandated between 6:00am to 12am and will be a speaker. His school at Albert Einstein by the Medicare Daily. Ask for Rooms for lecture is very much College of Medicine in New Improvements for Patients the ARMRIT group . anticipated and everyone York, Damadian joined the and Providers Act of 2008 looks forward to learn how faculty of Downstate (MIPPA). Providers must Fill Out Registration Form this indomitable machine Medical Center in Brooklyn, comply with CMS’ On Page 9 and Fax to: came to be invented and New York. About this time requirement that all 718-347-8691 eventually fully accepted as a Dr. Damadian began to providers of CT, MRI, PET Or visit www.armrit.org revolutionary imaging experience persistent & Nuclear Medicine, be and Click on the diagnostic tool. Don't miss abdominal pain. accredited by Jan. 1, 2012, Acteva Box! this historic event. (Cont. on page 2) in order to be reimbursed. Wilfrido M. Sy, MD 1 Damadian ( cont. from page 1) around the mouse. In an attempt to get a construction of a superconducting magnet. He had rarely been sick. The possibility of clearer focus, the current was increased The design was called the “Helmhotz cancer entered his mind. Although the pain continuously. Unfortunately this cooked Pair”. It consisted of two hoops of subsided eventually, this was the spark “pioneer mouse”. On March 11th, 1976, Niobium-titanium wire wrapped around which ignited the interest in developing a Dr. Larry Minkoff, an assistant to Dr. many times to produce a solenoid. When method to view the human body’s interior Damadian, was able to produce a crude attached to a power source, the magnet for early detection of disease. image of a tumor on the anterior chest wall would have a field strength of five Using a primitive NMR machine, Dr. of the second pioneer mouse. thousand gauss (0.5T). All other magnets Damadian found that he could distinguish Everywhere Dr. Damadian spoke about of this size were part of nuclear between normal tissue and cancerous NMR and its possible application to detect accelerators. tissue in rats implanted with tumors. cancer in humans; it seemed everyone was One concern was the effect of having During testing, he found that T1 and T2 talking about Paul Lauterbur’s technique two extremely powerful magnets in the relaxation times for healthy and unhealthy called Zeugmatography. Damadian was same room. There was the possibility that tissue were noticeably different. fearful that Lauterbur would get credit for the supporting structure would not be Discovering that the NMR machine was his ideas and receive recognition that was sufficient to keep the magnets apart and useful in detecting cancer, Damadian rightfully his. could slam together with tremendous envisioned its use in the detection of heart Also in February 1976, Damadian’s force. A scary prospect indeed. and kidney, as well as mental disease. team, consisting of Larry Minkoff and By a stroke of good luck, the team was After publishing his article in “Science” Mike Goldsmith were ready to construct a able to obtain superconducting wire for magazine in 1971, many individuals in the machine large enough to scan a human. pennies on the dollar from Westinghouse scientific and NMR community considered Finding that their funds were insufficient when the company decided to get out of Damadian’s ideas to be far out in left field. to buy a magnet, they decided to build the superconducting wire business. At the They saw NMR as a test for high their own. same time, it was learned that Paul resolution sampling only. Test tube Lauterbur had ordered a resistive magnet samples are spun at about one hundred In February, 1974, Dr. with a bore large enough to place a human rotations per minute in order to create a Damadian was issued a patent inside. Upon delivery it was discovered stronger and clearer signal from a more for his “Apparatus and Method that the opening was too small! homogeneous sample. To put a person in for Detecting Cancer in Mike Goldsmith spent many weeks the NMR machine seemed totally Tissue". wrapping the superconducting wire into outlandish. When Dr. Damadian, during hoop shaped coils for the new machine. He his various lecture tours, mentioned his At the same time, two groups in the was worried that the joints holding the desire to build an NMR machine that was physics department of the University of wire together might be faulty. Goldsmith large enough to scan a human, it seemed as Nottingham in England were working to used an ohmmeter to check the coils, if someone from the audience always produce clear NMR images. One group, luckily all connections were good. asked, “How fast are you going to spin the led by Waldo Hinshaw and Raymond Damadian and Minkoff built the cryostats patient?” Needless to say, he had few Andrew, the other group, led by Peter to contain the liquid helium and nitrogen. supporters at this time. Mansfield. Hinshaw evolved his own Each container was about 10 feet tall and Writing to President Nixon, after many scanning technique, thinking that weighed over a ton. Many long hours were attempts to obtain grant money for Lauterbur’s was too complicated. Instead spent in the lab, fearing that Lauterbur research, Damadian received a grant from he used oscillating gradients to isolate a would be the first to scan a human. At the National Institute of Health (NIH) in point or plane in space. This way Hinshaw times they would work through the night 1971, to continue his work. He proposed to was able to focus the scan on one area, and home was only a place to sleep. use whole body scanning by NMR for wiping out all other signals in the sample. The doughnut-shaped dewar (cryostat) medical diagnosis in a patent application in Images of a lemon and a human wrist were took nearly a year to construct. Leaks were 1972. eventually produced employing this a major problem, even a hole the size of a During experimentation, Dr. Damadian method. molecule had to be sealed; cryogen could found that cancerous tissue had a leak right through the pores of the relaxation time two to three times that of By February 1976, Dr. aluminum. The entire structure had to be normal tissue. Being an outsider to the Damadian, using his FONAR covered by the welding torch.