[HN Gopher] An eccentric engineer at the Beatles' record company...
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An eccentric engineer at the Beatles' record company invented the
CT scan
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 121 points
Date : 2021-10-02 17:11 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fastcompany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fastcompany.com)
| Arainach wrote:
| This article title is rather poor: while the Beatles recorded
| some records for EMI, they founded a record company (Apple
| Records) and did much of their work under that label, so "the
| Beatles' record company" would in context always refer to Apple,
| not EMI.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| The focus of the article is to make it seem random that this
| guy was working for a record company that distributed the
| Beatles and yet he invented X-Ray CT scans.
|
| His biography on Wikipedia[1] which dovetails with the true
| history of EMI, at one time a builder of computers and other
| electronics, makes it more a matter of the inspiration from a
| walk in the countryside coming into the mind of a well-prepared
| engineer.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_Hounsfield
| freetinker wrote:
| So a trained engineer who won the Nobel prize. What an
| egregiously clickbait-y title.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| He won the Nobel for the invention of the CT scan. The
| clickbait-y part mostly concerns EMI. EMI is strange
| company. It started as a merger between a gramophone
| producer and a record company to create a vertically
| integrated business in the 30s. Capitalising on their
| expertise in sound production and broadcasting equipments
| they became a very important producer of radar equipments
| during the Second World War. And it's this expertise in
| military radar technology which lead to the development of
| the CT scan. Meanwhile the recording part of the company
| merrily lived its own life and happened to produce the
| Beatles.
| tpmx wrote:
| _He retired from EMI in 1986 and used the prize money from
| his Nobel to build a personal laboratory in his home._
|
| Loved that part. Imagine a $1M home lab!
| w0mbat wrote:
| I agree, describing EMI as "the Beatles record company" is true
| but very misleading.
|
| EMI was a diverse conglomerate that was involved in all kinds
| of stuff, from military RADAR systems to making TV cameras,
| computers and blank cassette tapes. Yes, EMI had a record
| company division (also famous for firing The Sex Pistols), but
| EMI was exactly the kind of huge industrial tech company you
| would expect to invent a new kind of scanner.
| mohn wrote:
| > Hounsfield pondered whether it was possible to detect hidden
| areas in Egyptian pyramids by capturing cosmic rays that passed
| through unseen voids.
|
| I also wondered about this possibility a few years ago and when I
| searched online, I found an example of muon tomography of the
| volcanic dome of La Soufriere on the island of Guadeloupe[1].
| Cool non-seismic approach to a difficult imaging problem.
|
| Specifically, I was wondering about neutrino tomography of the
| entire earth, but the low probability of neutrino collisions
| would seem to make that infeasible.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPYhqJ3e-2o
| [deleted]
| 1-6 wrote:
| He basically went from EMI to EMF.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| Unbelievable.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| > Finally, in possibly his most ingenious invention, Hounsfield
| created an algorithm to reconstruct an image of the brain based
| on all these layers. By working backward and using one of the
| era's fastest new computers, he could calculate the value for
| each little box of each brain layer. Eureka!
|
| And, of course, they glossed over the most interesting part by
| simply saying "an algorithm." I know that modern CT scans use
| Marching Cubes [1], which is what that particular algorithm was
| developed for, but that came later in the 80s.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching_cubes
| habi wrote:
| I don't think they glossed over the marching cubes algorithm,
| but more over the theoretical work of Allan Cormack [0], which
| is crucial for CT reconstruction.
|
| (I work with (benchtop) microCT machines)
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_MacLeod_Cormack
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Marching Cubes is only the visualization mechanism after you
| have the voxels. The real work is in reconstructing the 3D data
| [voxels] from 1D scans, and that typically uses the Radon
| transform:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon_transform
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Don't they really use Feldkamp-Davis-Kress cone-beam
| algorithm? (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15305448/)
|
| Because the x-ray sources are point sources, or close, so you
| get a cone beam.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I was taught in school that the algorithm was an inverted 3d
| Fourier Transform. I'm not sure if I believe that now.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Sort of.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon_transform#Relationship_w.
| ..
| mastrsushi wrote:
| Cus I'm the CT scan!!
|
| Cus I'm the CT scan yeah!!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| coldtea wrote:
| He wasn't the only "eccentric engineer" associated with the
| Beatles and Apple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Alex
| lelandfe wrote:
| I thought the "nothing box" that he invented was an apt self-
| description.
|
| Wound up finding an old advert for it:
| http://lennonsunroom.blogspot.com/2010/04/nothing-box.html
| ttoinou wrote:
| I'm more impressed by how you would align the X rays slices to
| correct translation / shifts, seems like a bigger problem to me
| than reconstructing the data from aligned scans
| car wrote:
| The fundamental invention of tomography was by by William
| Oldendorf who inspired Hounsfield.
|
| He used a record turntable and a toy train to prototype his early
| ideas.
|
| His egregious exclusion from the Nobel prize was deemed a
| political decision by the Europeans committee due to ongoing
| patent matters.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Oldendorf#Role_in_d...
| ludwigvan wrote:
| Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the first CT scan!
|
| https://twitter.com/ARRS_Radiology/status/144391762570111388...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_R47LDdlZM
| decker wrote:
| It's unfortunate that he went back to work instead of quitting
| and filing patents on the device.
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