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History of Cardiac CT: A Personal Story

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CT of the Heart

Part of the book series: Contemporary Medical Imaging ((CMI))

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Abstract

As the story goes, Wilhelm Conrad Röentgen, a physicist, was working late in his laboratory in Wurzburg, Germany, experimenting with a vacuum tube made of glass. He was using this to generate beams of electrons and wrapped the tube with black paper to avoid viewing the electric discharge occurring in the gas inside the vacuum tube. When he started his experiment, he noted that a piece of coated paper lying near the tube began to glow. He was astonished and did another experiment where he held a thick book between the tube and the paper – however, the “rays” simply passed through the book, as if totally unobstructed. When Röentgen looked at the coated paper, it showed a shadowy outline of the bones in his hand. This was November 8, 1895, and the world of the “X-ray” has never looked back.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cardiac Imaging, The Princeton Longevity Center, Princeton, NJ, USA

    John A. Rumberger

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  1. John A. Rumberger
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Correspondence to John A. Rumberger .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Center for Advanced Imaging Research (CAIR), Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

    U. Joseph Schoepf

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Rumberger, J.A. (2019). History of Cardiac CT: A Personal Story. In: Schoepf, U. (eds) CT of the Heart. Contemporary Medical Imaging. Humana, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60327-237-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60327-237-7_1

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-60327-236-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-60327-237-7

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