Synthesized answer
The author provides evidence regarding the development of computerized axial tomography (CAT or CT scan). This evidence includes the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology awarded in 1979 to Allan McLeod Cormack and Godfrey Newbold Houns eld for their pioneering work in the 1960s and early 1970s [1]. Cormack developed mathematical algorithms in his papers [13] that could be used to create an image from X-ray data, and Houns eld designed the first operational CT scanner and a commercially available model [1]. The passage also notes the significant increase in CT scans performed annually in the United States, from about 3 million in 1980 to over 67 million [1].
Furthermore, the author points to the fundamental mathematical nature of the CT scan procedure, which involves reconstructing a function from the integrals of that function along all possible cross-sections [2]. This is presented as an example of an inverse problem, which was studied by Johann Radon in the early twentieth century [2].
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
Title: The Mathematics of Medical Imaging by Timothy G. Feeman Description: In 1979, the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology was awarded jointly to Allan McLeod Cormack and Godfrey Newbold Houns eld, the two pioneering scienti- engineers primarily responsible for the development, in the 1960s and early 1970s, of computerized axial tomography, popularly known as the CAT or CT scan. In his papers [13], Cormack, then a Professor at Tufts University, in Massachusetts, dev- oped certain mathematical algorithms that, he envisioned, could be used to create an image from X-ray data. Working…
nd this procedure is essentially mathematical: If we know the values of the integral of a two- or three-dimensional fu- tion along all possible cross-sections, then how can we reconstruct the function itself? This particular example of what is known as an inverse problem was studied by Johann Radon, an Austrian mathematician, in the early part of the twentieth century. Categories: Mathematics Pages: 151 Snippet: ... Mathematics 32 , SIAM , Philadelphia , 2001 . 31. Noble , B. , and J. W. Daniel , Applied Linear Algebra , 3rd ed . , Prentice - Hall , Englewood Cliffs , 1988 . 32. <b>The…