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For allowing doctors to peer
into previously impenetrable
parts of the human body, two
physicists have scooped the
2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine. Paul Lauterbur of
the University of Illinois in
Urbana and Peter Mansfield of
the University of Nottingham,
UK, share the prize for their
contribution to the development of magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI).
Before the advent of MRI
in the 1970s, doctors struggled Winners: Paul Lauterbur (left) with the first magnetic resonance image and Peter Mansfield by the machine it inspired.
to examine organs and soft
tissues in people using X-rays. Today, MRI that the technique could be used to image live and clinicians to take snapshots of fastclinicians and medical researchers alike can animals, rather than killing them to remove moving events, such as the beating of the
readily view details of the internal structure and study their tissues.“I thought there must heart. It has also been vital in the developbe another way,”he says.
of patients’entire bodies.
ment of brain scanning by functional MRI,
But at the time, it was difficult to envisage in which mental activity can be tracked by
Lauterbur and Mansfield kick-started this
revolution in medical imaging by tweaking a the technique evolving to give us the sophis- monitoring changes in blood flow.“It’s been
technique called nuclear magnetic resonance ticated medical images that are now routine critical,” says Paul Matthews, director of the
(NMR), primarily used for investigating — nearly 60 million of
Centre for Functional MRI
molecular structures. When placed in a them were taken in 2002.
of the Brain at the Universmagnetic field, the nuclei of certain atoms, “No one could imagine
ity of Oxford, UK.
including hydrogen, line up. Subjected to a doing this to people,”
A Nobel for MRI has
blast of radio waves, they absorb this radia- explains radiologist Paul
been long anticipated but,
tion and emit it again as an NMR signal — Bottomley of Johns Hopbecause its development
from which the structure of the molecules in kins University in Baltihas involved many steps,
more, Maryland.
which the atoms sit can be deciphered.
deciding who to reward
It was Mansfield who, in
While working at the State University of
won’t have been easy. “It’s
New York at Stony Brook,Lauterbur came up a series of papers, provided
been a hot potato for the
with the idea of using a graded magnetic field imaginative leaps to turn
Nobel prize committee,”
that increased in strength from one side of MRI into a useful clinical
suggests John Griffiths of St
an object to the other to create a two-dimen- tool. “His talent is tenacity
George’s Hospital Medical
sional image of the object’s internal struc- and coming up with good MRI in action: a brain tumour
School, London, who uses
ture. This is based on the idea that nuclei ideas,”says Bottomley.
MRI to diagnose and study
(green) is marked for surgery.
The first advance made
absorb and emit radio waves at different
cancer — one of its most
frequencies, depending on the strength of by Mansfield was to show that it is possible to important clinical applications.
selectively image a particular two-dimensional
the magnetic field in which they are held.
In the end, the Nobel committee seems
In a seminal paper, Lauterbur produced slice of an object held in a graded magnetic to have awarded the prize specifically for the
crude images of two glass capillaries filled field by delivering the blast of radio waves at initial developments involving the use of
with water (P. C. Lauterbur Nature 242, a particular frequency. Second, he developed graded magnetic fields. But experts say that
190–191; 1973). His manuscript was initially techniques to manipulate the applied this does not preclude recognition of other
rejected by Nature, but his protests proved magnetic fields and algorithms to interpret the contributors to MRI in the future. “It
successful.“I congratulate you on eventually resulting cacophony of radio signals that leaves the way open,” says Stephen Keevil,
giving in to my anguish,” he told Nature this enabled images to be pieced together in just a magnetic resonance physicist at Guy’s
a matter of seconds.
week, hours after the prize was announced.
Hospital, London.
■
Mansfield’s work has allowed researchers ➧ www.nobel.se
From the beginning, Lauterbur believed
NATURE | VOL 425 | 9 OCTOBER 2003 | www.nature.com/nature
© 2003 Nature Publishing Group
547
S. TAN/AP
Helen Pearson, London
MIT AI LAB/SURGICAL PLANNING LAB/BRIGHAM & WOMEN’S HOSP./SPL
S.PERLMAN/AP
Magnetic pioneers net Nobel for
putting medicine in the picture