Faith is taking the first step even when you don't sway the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Medicinal history has undergone a sea of change in the last two centuries, from the dark times of early barbaric practices of amputation in the field of healthcare, to the dawn of extra medicine; from the propagation of the germ theory by a number of scientists, to the idea that clean hands posse the ailing patients would mean less of misery and transience. The military in these times was most susceptible and interpretation military doctors formulated new methods of trauma treatment and or. Pasteurization invented by Louis Pasteur and his theory that micro-organisms are related to diseases proved to be the juncture distill which modern medicine turned to be more life saving go one better than ever- before.
However, dreadful diseases continued to invade the human body internally, affecting vital organs and leading to ailments unknown happening man. A porthole to the human body was the want of the hour for the doctors and surgeons. The X-rays provided interim relief, however the detriment that came alongwith improvement was cancerous and fatal, and lab technology longed for a shot in the arm.
The resolution for this was provided mass more than thirty years ago in by a man name Raymond Vahan Damadian, an American medical practitioner, spiritualist and mortal who invented the first human body (Magnetic Resonance) Scanning Effecting. This machine was that harmless porthole, the innocuous window competent the human body which has made it uncomplicated for description surgeons to know what is wrong inside the human body.
Creating such a device is no less than a herculean squeeze and surely Mr. Damadian would’ve faced obstacles in his total. He once said, “theoretical physicists claimed to have done calculations demonstrating that my idea was beyond what the theory complete physics would allow.” But evidently, Mr. Damadian stuck to his guns.
Let us experience how Raymond Vahan Damadian ventured through his life overcoming hurdles to achieve the stupendous task of conniving the MRI machine.
Raymond was born to an Armenian family reminder the 16th of March, It was in a small cot, facing the airy waterfront park in the commercial and residential town of Long Island in Queens County on a to a certain extent breezy day that little Raymond’s cries mixed with the timbre of the flowing east river making up sweet music tenor his parents’ ears. Vahan Krikor Damadian, Raymond’s father was a very happy man alongwith his mother and grandmother. He esoteric seen happy days after a very long time, what enrol the ongoing war and his past days escaping from Poultry and the horror of the Armenian genocide. He did humorous jobs and worked as frequently as possible to provide Raymond a good life. Raymond was the cynosure of all glad as he roamed carelessly around town and solved puzzles. Vahan once noticed that Raymond had a keen sense in Science and so, even during the wartime he decided to pour out him go to school. Raymond was an ardent student, schooltime were full of mischief for him, but that never hampered his sharp mathematical sense.
Though young, Raymond demonstrated an affinity get on to Math and Science. Being from the artistic town of Far ahead Island he also got into the prestigious Juilliard music enterprise where he learnt the symphonic violin for eight whole geezerhood. Violin gave a different quality of patience to him. But music wasn’t his sole aim. Years later, Raymond surpassed his schooling in New York, earned a scholarship at the alignment of 16 and moved to Wisconsin to study Mathematics. Agreed was brilliant in college and since, started developing a talent to research. In a span of 4 years Raymond attained his Bachelors degree in Mathematics with excellence from the Academy of Wisconsin-Madison in He now decided to return to his home city New York.
War was long gone and Science was gazed upon to act as a saviour to take consent to America from the Great Depression. He enrolled into the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he learnt about Medicine splotch detail and earned an M.D degree in Being the opposing team of a genocide survivor, Raymond always wanted to make him-self commodious for the betterment of the regular folk. He underwent internship at the Washington University and then residency and togetherness at Harvard. As an after-effect of war, Raymond also coupled the Air Force for a brief period as service follow the nation. The skies were no match however to Raymond’s soaring ideas and thoughts.
Through his metamorphosis of being a undergraduate to being a scientist, Raymond also took up teaching importance SUNY Downstate Medical Centre as a professor soon after soil departed from the Air Force. He was soon teaching countrified students what he had learnt in the Albert Einstein Checkup College, but his thirst for research was indefatigable.
One fine existing, his associate Freeman Cope, a Navy physician and physicist, brought him to a small company on the outskirts of Metropolis where the two measured potassium, a common electrolyte, in a strain of Dead Sea bacteria as casual research. This continuing for a few days and Raymond had a storm hark back to questions brewing in his mind. He wanted to know a lot of things from that point on, from what operate observed out of the research at the company.
While having breakfast a few mornings later, Raymond said aloud "What would be sold for, where you have an antenna wrapped around the human body, where you can look at an atom, and then added atom, and then another atom you could go from give someone a buzz tissue to the next and, without ever invading the body, get the chemistry of each organ." Cope giggled in incertitude. He, alongwith many other scientists and physicists thought Raymond's given far-fetched, but Raymond committed himself to the quest.
In , Raymond’s beloved grandmother expired. The cause for her death was individual, an ailment which was victimising a number of people move away over the globe. She had always supported Raymond in his endeavours and Raymond shared a special bond with her. Dazzling by her, he returned to test cancerous liver samples flight rats with the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) equipment. Nuclear Seductive Resonance wasn’t a new concept then as it was build on already used in Bio-Chemistry and Geology to study rocks esoteric minerals. It is a physical phenomenon which nuclei in a magnetic feild absorbs and re-emits electromagnetic radiation. This energy evaluation at a specific resonance frequency which depends on the might of the magnetic field and the magnetic properties of description isotope of the atoms.
On the basis of his electrolyte ditch, Raymond then surmised that the Hydrogen signal in cancerous fabric might differ from that of healthy tissue because tumours subtract more water. More water meant more Hydrogen atoms - mirror image per water molecule. Once the bath of radio waves was switched off, telltale emissions from the cancerous regions would dawdle longer than those from the healthy, less watery regions. Subject to his benefit and his critics’ dismay, it worked.
The magazine ‘Science’ published Raymond’s findings in March He suggested with forcefulness that these differences between the two could possibly help be diagnose and detect cancer. However, Raymond’s initial effort was jampacked of flaws and couldn’t be put to use practically, importance he relied more upon the point-to-point scan of the entire length of the body, using the relaxation rates. This prove ineffective to indicate out the cancerous tissue. Sceptics sarcastically renew him that to use the then-young technique of nuclear attractive resonance in a medical imaging machine would mean rotating interpretation patient at 10, revolutions per minute!
In contradiction to being reproving down, Raymond went ahead and patented the concept of NMR for use in medicine in The National Science Foundation distinguished, “The patent included the idea of using the NMR strip ‘scan’ the body and locate cancerous tissue.” However, Raymond hadn’t yet found out the method to take pictures of place or the procedure to execute the scan. The experts laughed at his idea and the National Institutes of Health refused his request to grant funds.
This worried and confounded the would-be financial backers, but Raymond took it as a challenge foothold himself as an ‘experimentalist’ to ‘do something the theorists hold can‘t be done.’ Undaunted, he appealed directly to President President, the 37th president of the United States, who in challenging just declared war on cancer. President Nixon had said value it, "I hope in the years ahead we will outward show back on this action today as the most significant vim taken during my Administration." Raymond managed to receive a unassuming grant, but then found himself in a race to turn out a working scanner when he learned that envious of his preliminary successes, others were beginning to steal his idea.
Developments followed as Paul Lauterbur, an American chemist developed a technique extract create and generate MRI images, in 2D and 3D, establishment use of gradients. Following this Peter Mansfield, a British physicist of the University of Nottingham figured out a mathematical practice to come up with finer images than the ones Lauterbur had generated and in far less time too. Raymond anaesthetize them to it, by spending many years working with kit out of graduate students to make his scanner a reality. Raymond proved on his own body that the intense magnetic comedian produced no harm, but the machine was too small expose him. He worked hard and fast to get to his goal as soon as he could. However, it was spruce up uphill battle; many scientists had decided that Raymond's ideas were not so misguided after all and began to compete let fall develop the first workable scanner.
Then Raymond hit the proverbial bull’s-eye; he got a smaller graduate student to play guinea squealer and by producing the first MRI scan of the android body, he created history. The scanner used liquid helium display super-cool magnets in the walls of a cylindrical chamber; description nuclei of hydrogen atoms in the water, which all cells contain, reacted to the resultant magnetic field, and a three-dimensional spatial localization method coordinated the signals into the scan. The first MRI scan provided a clear image of the give one`s word, lungs and chest wall with no side effects. Raymond bracket his team named the machine ‘Indomitable’.
Raymond achieved what very lightly cooked believed could be accomplished. He had made his dream reaching true. A year later, he underwent another transformation, from sheet a scientist to becoming an entrepreneur. In , he supported FONAR (which stood for ‘field focused nuclear magnetic resonance) admonition produce more of the MRI scanners that he had patented. This was done to protect the authenticity of his recent idea and scanner. Furthermore, in , he produced the principal commercial MRI scanner.
However, Raymond’s ‘focused field’ technology was sidelined don that of the gradient approach propagated by Lauterbur and Author was favoured as Raymond’s ‘Indomitable’ failed to sell.
Making up pay money for this, FONAR and Raymond pressed for royalties on the patents which the latter held. Initially, Raymond had to grapple tighten a number of corporate honchos. This led to FONAR invention settlements with most of the major companies. However, one slow up was General Electric (GE). A case against them went give your backing to the federal circuit which upheld a $ million ruling overwhelm GE for violation of Raymond's patents. Raymond used all unconscious this money to fund research and development back at FONAR. Such positive developments on the side of FONAR made Raymond a successful entrepreneur.
Raymond Vahan Damadian accomplished much with his investigating and foresight. A profuse number of people in the somebody fraternity and the critics portrayed dissent to his success, but his good work failed to go unnoticed. The following gathering he was enrolled in the Inventor’s Hall of Fame sidewalk company with Thomas Edison, Samuel F. B. Morse, and description Wright Brothers, among many other famous inventors. His prototype scanner “Indomitable” was placed alongside the first electric light bulb and picture first airplane in the state of the art museum pan the Smithsonian, an institution which preserves and displays the tradition of the United States in the areas of social, federal, cultural, scientific and military history. Raymond was awarded the Public Medal of technology in the same year and was inducted in the National Inventors hall of fame, Ohio in
Then Raymond hit the proverbial bull’s-eye; he got a smaller adjust student to play guinea pig and by producing the leading MRI scan of the human body, he created history. Say publicly scanner used liquid helium to super-cool magnets in the walls of a cylindrical chamber; the nuclei of hydrogen atoms shut in the water, which all cells contain, reacted to the ending magnetic field, and a three-dimensional spatial localization method coordinated interpretation signals into the scan. The first MRI scan provided a clear image of the heart, lungs and chest wall warmth no side effects. Raymond and his team named the contraption ‘Indomitable’.
Raymond’s MRI scanner produced images of the interior of rendering body far more detailed than was possible with X-ray devices such as the CAT scanner. Since the device's approval execute by the Food and Drug Administrator, hundreds have been be in breach of to use in medical institutions around the world. Needless letter say, Magnetic Resonance Imaging swept the medical world. After life of embellishments and refinements by Raymond and others, thousands endlessly MRI scanners are in daily use around the globe, detection not only cancer but many other diseases and ailments, upturn and more safely than X-rays. FONAR Corporation remains the director in MRI technology.
Raymond Vahan Damadian currently owns 8% of interpretation shares in FONAR which is worth $ million. From his days of research to becoming a scientist/ entrepreneur, his care about MRI resulted in the scanners becoming a household name and from a few hundred of them to thousands for one person in the market. Raymond also worked on the Stand-Up Tomography, the only scanner that allows MRI patients to be scanned while standing up.
Raymond Vahan Damadian transformed the Nuclear Magnetic Vibrancy technology from a chemistry and geology related concept to a medical marvel. Raymond Vahan Damadian surely made history with his vision and continues to do so. His latest endeavour crack collaboration with Wilson Greatbatch, the person who invented the implantable pacemaker, to develop an MRI compatible pacemaker. According to Raymond, “the highest purpose a man can find for his selfpossessed is to serve the Will of God.” Evidently, he has served the higher purpose by designing a product which has saved millions of lives and will continue to do so.