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Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield
(1919)
English electrical engineer who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology
or Medicine with Allan Cormack for his part in developing the diagnostic
technique of computerized axial tomography (CAT). In this technique,
information obtained from X rays taken by scanners rotating around the
patient are combined by a computer to yield a high-resolution image
of a slice of the body.
After studying electronics and radar as a member of the Royal Air Force
during World War II and at Faraday House Electrical Engineering College
in London, Hounsfield joined the research staff of EMI Ltd. in 1951.
He led the design team that built the first all-transistor computer
in Great Britain, the EMIDEC 1100, in 1958-59. Later, while investigating
the problem of pattern recognition, he developed the basic idea of CAT.
Hounsfield extended the capability of a computer so that it could interpret
X-ray signals so as to form a two-dimensional image of a complex object
such as the human head. He pursued the application of axial tomography
to medical diagnosis, building a prototype head scanner and then a body
scanner at EMI. Computers soon evolved to the stage needed for processing
the signals from the scanners at the same rate they were obtained, and
in 1972 the first clinical test of CAT scanning was performed successfully.
For his work Hounsfield received numerous awards in addition to the
Nobel Prize, and he was knighted in 1981.
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