As time went – arising of the nuclear medicine specialty

Overview

We frequently ask how nuclear medicine emerged, what preceded, how the evolution came to the present days. As we looked into the history, we can see that the oldest medical record is dated approximately to the year 2050 BC, the most famous physician of the Ancient Greece Hippokrates lived around the year 400 BC and the Greek philosopher Demokritos described the atomic theory of mass at the same era. Board examinations were introduced in Rome at the year 200 AD and degree MD was established in the Italian city Salerno at the year 1180 AD.

Medicine underwent a monumental development thanks to discoveries in biology, physics and chemistry in the 19th and 20th centuries awarded with several Nobel prices. Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-ray in 1895, Henry Becquerel natural radioactivity in 1896 and ionizing radiation started to be used for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes in 1897.

Personal dosimeters were used during operation with radiation but personal dosimetry as a discipline emerged only in the seventieths. It is a long time from the thirtieth, when E. O. Lawrence assembled the first cyclotron, J. Chadwick discovered a neutron, radionuclide ^99mTc was prepared from ⁹⁹Mo and radioactive iodine begun to be used to treat thyroid gland thanks to G. Seaborg. Turning point for nuclear medicine was the year 1950 when Hal O. Anger assembled a scintillation gamma camera. This type from 1957 is still in use. SPECT and PET cameras followed and hybrid systems SPECT/CT, PET/CT and PET/MR emerged at the beginning of the 21st century.

Of course, professional societies and other institutions were established together with the specialty.

Key Words:
nuclear medicine, history, specialty formation