The difference between imaging systems of 1975 and now is like comparing an early biplane to a modern jet aircraft
It is remarkable how much has changed in the 50 years since RAD Magazine was launched.
So many new technologies have come into clinical use over the time and then been developed further to provide a vast array of new diagnostic and therapeutic applications.
CT had only just been invented by Godfrey Hounsfield and it was less than four years earlier that the first clinical CT scan had been carried out at the Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, south-west London.
In 1975 when RAD Magazine was first published there were less than a dozen CT scanners in the UK and a single-slice CT scan could take around 20 seconds. Modern multislice spiral CT scanners can now do a complete volume scan in the same time.
After the invention of CT other new imaging technologies followed: MRI, power Doppler and 3D ultrasound, SPECT and PET to name but a few. In 1975 MRI was not in clinical use in the UK. It was in 1980 that the first diagnostic MRI body scan was carried out in Aberdeen on a system using a 0.04T magnet. MRI scanners using 0.3 or 0.5T magnets followed – many of which were resistive magnets. Over the years MRI systems have developed significantly and those now in routine clinical use are typically based upon 1.5 and 3.0T superconductive magnets.
The difference between the imaging systems in clinical use in 1975 and now is a bit like the difference between an early biplane and a modern jet aircraft. It was the development of computers that enabled CT and since then computers have had a tremendous impact on the world of radiology. The ongoing development of computers, electronics and smart algorithms enabled image generation, analysis, manipulation and much more, which have created systems that have had a major impact on the detection, staging and monitoring of disease.
The developments in computer technology also enabled the transmission of clinical images between hospitals via teleradiology and the evolution of PACS systems, which are integral to clinical services today.
It is hard to believe that mobile phones were not generally introduced into the UK until 1992 and that the modern smartphone has far more power than the large mainframe computers that were in use when RAD Magazine was first published.
So many aspects have changed over the years, companies have come and gone, and many companies have merged.
It was in 1975 when the RSNA moved its annual congress from Chicago’s Palmer House Hilton to McCormick Place. In the 1980s RAD Magazine’s sister entity Kingsmoor Travel provided travel packages and hotel bookings for RSNA, enabling many of the British attendees to stay in the same hotel: The Inn of Chicago. I remember staying there with David Roberts, his colleagues from RAD Magazine and other UK attendees and this created a wonderful UK radiological community that lasted over many years.
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