Radiology

Radiology is a branch of medicine whereby radiologists use medical imaging technologies to diagnose and sometimes treat particular diseases. Originally, it was largely connected with the use of X-ray machines and similar devices to photograph parts of people to assist doctors in diagnosis, but is not the radiology involving a wider range of machines and imaging devices.

Radiology began after a German professor of physics, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, discovered X-rays in his laboratory in the University of Würzburg on November 8, 1895. Within several months of this medical breakthrough, there were attempts to produce film of moving objects in hope that radiology might be able to depict function. However, this led to technical difficulties because of the very much higher doses of radiation required for moving film, preventing this technique from being developed. However, the X-rays provided such a breakthrough in medical technology that within 10 years, radiology was being used in many parts of the Western world. As a result, Röntgen received the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901, with the first English-language book on chest radiography being published in 1905.

Essentially, the X-ray machine provides an image whereby doctors can evaluate bony structures and soft tissues, as well as spotting foreign bodies in tissue. This led to the radiodiagnosis becoming common with the ability of X-rays to penetrate tissue, managing to show up some substances to fluoresce, as well as preserving the situation with a photograph. With the X-rays being able to penetrate tissue, the radiation is absorbed differentially, dependant on the densities of the tissues concerned. As a result, the photograph taken can show a notable contrast between the images of structures and organs, even though these X-rays do not differentiate on their images between adjacent areas of soft tissues. The development of X-ray techniques and technologies by radiographers has meant that contrast [Page 1466]media can be injected into blood vessels and the effect of them will be seen in X-rays showing the media in arteries, veins, kidneys, and urinary tracts.

The work of radiographers has also changed from simply photographing a patient to providing a more detailed diagnosis.

In the first 20 years following the discovery of X-rays, the role of radiologists changed dramatically with the X-ray machines being used to treat fractures of bones and also for the localization of foreign bodies in tissue, especially bullets lodged in people's tissue during World War I. The work on locating and extracting bullets led Maria Curie to push for the mobile radiography units to be established to treat soldiers, with her personally providing radon tubes for the French Army. In 1920, the Society of Radiographers was formed, and radiology continued to develop in many ways.

In 1937, a patient suffering from leukemia was treated at the University of California, Berkeley, using radioactivity to treat cancer for the first time. In the same year, Joseph Gilbert Hamilton started to use radioactive iodine for the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid disease. By the 1950s, the work of radiographers had changed to include work on the electronic method which was devised to intensify the image with an image intensifier, overcoming earlier technical difficulties to make cineradiography become more common.

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