The Development of High-Tech Medical Diagnostic Tools
Overview
Near the end of the twentieth century, high-tech diagnostic imaging techniques became powerful medical tools that allowed physicians to explore bodily structures and functions with a minimum of invasion to the patient. Advances in diagnostic technology allowed physicians the ability to evaluate processes and events as they occurred in vivo (in the living body). During the 1970s, advances in computer technologies allowed the development of accurate, accessible, and relatively inexpensive (when compared to surgical explorations) non-invasive technologies. Although relying on different physical principles (i.e., electromagnetism vs. sound waves), all of the high-tech methods relied on computers to construct visual images from a set of indirect measurements. The development of high-tech diagnostic tools was the direct result of the clinical application of developments in physics and mathematics. These technological advances allowed the creation of a number of tools that made diagnosis more accurate, less invasive, and more economical.
Background
The use of non-invasive imaging traces its roots to the tremendous advances in the understanding of electromagnetism during the nineteenth century. By 1900, physicist Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen's (1845-1923) discovery of high energy electromagnetic radiation in the form of x rays were used in medical diagnosis.
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