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| English
engineer, a pioneer of tomography, the application of computer techniques
to X-raying the human body. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine 1979. Hounsfield was born in Newark, Nottinghamshire, and studied at the City and Guilds College, London, and the Faraday House Electrical Engineering College. He joined British electronics company EMI (now Thorn EMI) 1951 as a researcher in medical technology. The EMI scanner he invented 1972, a computerized transverse axial tomography system for X-ray examination, enables the whole body to be screened at one time. The X-ray crystal detectors, more sensitive than film, are rotated round the body and can distinguish between, for example, tumours and healthy tissue. |