Raymond Vahan Damadian

Raymond Vahan Damadian (born March 16 1936) is an American practitioner of magnetic resonance imaging.

Early life

Damadian was born in Melville, New York, who earned his BS in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1956, and an M.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City in 1960. He studied the violin at Juilliard for 8 years.cite news | title = Woodbury, N.Y., Medical Inventor Continues Lone Quest against Nobel Committee. | date = 2003-10-21 | url = http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-119698305.html | publisher = "New York Newsday" | accessdate = 2007-08-04 ]

Work on MRI

In a 1971 paper in the journal "Science" [Damadian, R. V. "Tumor Detection by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance," Science, 171 (March 19, 1971): 1151-1153] , SUNY Downstate Medical Center professor Damadian reported that tumors and normal tissue can be distinguished in vitro by nuclear magnetic resonance ("NMR"). He suggested that these differences could be used to diagnose cancer, though later research would find that these differences, while real, are too variable for diagnostic purposes. Damadian's initial methods were flawed for practical use,cite news | title = The man who did not win | date = 2003-10-17 | url = http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/16/1065917548433.html | publisher = "Sydney Morning Herald" | accessdate = 2007-08-04 ] relying on a point-by-point scan of the entire body and using relaxation rates, which turned out to not be an effective indicator of cancerous tissue.cite news | title = Scan and Deliver | date = 2002-06-14 | url = http://opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110001844l | publisher = "Wall Street Journal" | accessdate = 2007-08-04 ] Nonetheless, in 1974, he received the first patent in the field of MRI when he patented the concept of NMR [US patent|3789832] for detecting cancer after filing an application in 1972. As the National Science Foundation notes, "The patent included the idea of using NMR to 'scan' the human body to locate cancerous tissue." [ [http://www.sri.com/policy/csted/reports/techin/mri3.html NSF history] ] However, it did not describe a method for generating pictures from such a scan or precisely how such a scan might be done.cite news | title = Does Dr. Raymond Damadian Deserve the Nobel Prize for Medicine? | date = 2003-11-08 | url = http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-89000528.html | publisher = "The Armenian Reporter" | accessdate = 2007-08-05 ]

In the 1950s, Herman Carr reported [ [http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-7/p83a.html Physics Today July 2004 - Field Gradients in Early MRI ] ] creating a one-dimensional MR image. Prompted by Damadian's report on the potential medical uses of NMR, Paul Lauterbur expanded on Carr's technique and developed a way to generate the first MRI images, in 2D and 3D, using gradients. Peter Mansfield from the University of Nottingham then developed a mathematical technique that would allow scans to take seconds rather than hours and produce clearer images than Lauterbur had. While Lauterbur and Mansfield focused on animals and human limbs, Damadian built the first full-body MRI machine and produced the first full magnetic resonance imaging ("MRI") scan of the human body, albeit using a "focused field" technique that differs considerably from modern imaging. In recording the history of MRI, Mattson and Simon (1996) credit Damadian with describing the concept of whole-body NMR scanning, as well as discovering the NMR tissue relaxation differences that made this feasible.

First Human MRI Body Scan

On July 3, 1977, the first MRI "body" exam was performed on a human being (the first human scan was performed by Sir Peter Mansfield's team in Nottingham a year earlier - but this was a cross-sectional image through a finger rather than a body scan).

It took almost five hours to produce one image. The images were, by modern standards, rudimentary. Dr. Raymond Damadian, a physician and scientist, along with colleagues Dr. Larry Minkoff and Dr. Michael Goldsmith, labored tirelessly for seven long years to reach this point. They named their original machine "Indomitable" to capture the spirit of their struggle to do what many said could not be done.

This machine is now in the Smithsonian Institution. As late as 1982, there were but a handful of MRI scanners in the entire United States. Today there are thousands. It is possible to image in seconds what used to take hours.

Fonar Corporation

In 1978, Damadian formed his own company, FONAR (which stood for "field focused nuclear magnetic resonance"), for the production of MRI scanners, and in 1980, he produced the first commercial one. Damadian's "focused field" technology proved less effective than Lauterbur's gradient approach. His scanner, named "Indomitable," failed to sell. FONAR eventually abandoned Damadian's technique in favour of the methods adopted by Lauterbur and Mansfield. [ [http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues00/jun00/object_jun00.html] ] Damadian and FONAR aggressively enforced the royalties on patents held by Damadian. [ [https://ecf.nyed.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/qrySummary.pl?20562 Fonar v. Hitachi] ] They settled with many large companies, but a case against General Electric went to the United States Supreme Court, which upheld a $129 million ruling against GE for violation of Damadian's patents.cite news | title = Doctor Disputes Winners of Nobel in Medicine | date = 2003-10-11 | url = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=technology&res=950CE7D7153FF932A25753C1A9659C8B63 | publisher = "New York Times" | accessdate = 2007-08-04 ] Damadian says that the judgment money has all been put back into FONAR for research and development purposes; he is the company's largest shareholder, with 8% of stock worth $6.5 million. Despite owning only 8% of the stock, however, he maintains near 100% control of the company through a separate class of shares (Class C) that only Damadian controls (2007 shareholder proxy statement).

Damadian later collaborated with Wilson Greatbatch, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker, to develop an MRI-compatible pacemaker. He also invented a stand-up MRI system and has 15 MRI scanning centers across the United States.

The company conceived and built the world's first Upright Multi-Positional MRI, which was recognized as The Invention of the Year in 2007 by the Intellectual Properties Owners Association Education Foundation.Fact|date=August 2007

Awards and honors

Damadian received a National Medal of Technology in 1988 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989. His original MRI full-body scanner was given to the Smithsonian Institution in the 1980s and is now on loan and on display at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Ohio.cite news | title = MRI's inside story | date = 2003-12-04 | url = http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_NNQGTGG | publisher = "The Economist" | accessdate = 2007-08-05 ]

In 2001, the Lemelson-MIT Prize Program bestowed its $100,000 Lifetime Achievement Award on Damadian as "the man who invented the MRI scanner." [ [http://web.mit.edu/invent/a-winners/a-damadian.html Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award on Dr. Damadian as "the man who invented the MRI scanner"] ] The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia gave its recognition of Damadian's work on MRI with the Bower Award in Business Leadership. He was also named the Knights of Vartan 2003 "Man of the Year." In September 2003, he was honored with the Innovation Award in Bioscience from "The Economist".

Nobel Prize controversy

In 2003, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for their discoveries related to MRI. Although Nobel rules allow for the award to be shared by up to three recipients, Damadian was not given the prize.

The controversy over who played what part in the development of the MRI had gone on for years prior to the Nobel announcement, and many in the scientific community felt that the Nobel had not been awarded for the MRI for so long due to debate over Damadian's role in its development. Damadian said that credit should go to "me, and then Lauterbur," and Lauterbur felt that only he should get credit. As an example of the debate, in 1997 the National Academy of Sciences commissioned a timeline of MRI milestones, and four of the 12 in an initial draft were attributed to Damadian. At the final publication in 2001, longer than any other publication in the series had ever been taken, none of the milestones were attributed to Damadian. The text said that Damadian's methods had "not proved clinically reliable in detecting or diagnosing cancer." After Damadian's lawyers sent the NAS a threatening letter, the text on the NAS website was revised, but still not to Damadian's satisfaction. Damadian said in 2002, "If I had not been born, would MRI have existed? I don't think so. If Lauterbur had not been born? I would have gotten there. Eventually."

The "New York Times" wrote:

The issue has been the subject of a dispute between Dr. Damadian and Dr. Lauterbur and has been known for years in academic circles, with some fearing that the Nobel committee would steer clear of magnetic resonance imaging altogether because of the Swedes' supposed distaste for controversial discoveries. Dr. Lauterbur, 74, is not in good health, and the committee may have decided that its prize, which cannot be given posthumously, needed to be awarded for the discovery now or never.".

After the announcement of Lauterbur and Mansfield's Nobels, between October and November 2003, an ad hoc group called "The Friends of Raymond Damadian"Fact|date=August 2007 took out full-page advertisements in "The New York Times" twice, "The Washington Post", "The Los Angeles Times" and one of the largest newspapers in Sweden, "Dagens Nyheter" protesting his exclusion with the headline "The Shameful Wrong That Must Be Righted" [ [http://www.fonar.com/nobel.htm The Shameful Wrong That Must Be Righted] ] in an attempt to get the Nobel Committee to change its mind and grant him a share of the Prize.cite news | title = Conduct Unbecoming | author=Gelernter, David| date = 2003-11-27 | url = http://opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110001844l | publisher = "Wall Street Journal" | accessdate = 2007-08-04 ] Damadian suggested that Lauterbur and Mansfield should have rejected the Nobel Prize unless Damadian was given joint recognition. Supporting Damadian were various MRI experts including John Throck Watson, Eugene Feigelson, V. Adrian Parsegian, Dr. David Stark and James MattsonFact|date=August 2007. New York Times columnist Horace Freeland Judson criticised this behavior, noting that there is "no Nobel Prize for whining" and that many deserving candidates who may have had better claims than Damadian, such as Lise Meitner, Oswald Avery and Jocelyn Bell, had been previously denied a share of the Nobel. [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C02E4DE123EF933A15753C1A9659C8B63 No Nobel Prize for Whining] NY Times October 20, 2003]

Others point out that while Damadian had hypothesized that NMR relaxation times might be used to detect cancer, he did not develop (nor did he suggest) the current way of creating images.

Some felt that research scientists sided with Lauterbur because he was one of their own, while Damadian was a medical doctor who had profited greatly from his early patents. Charles Springer, an expert in MRI at Oregon Health and Science University, said that if a poll was taken of the academic community, most would agree with the Nobel Committee's conclusions. Damadian's contributions were consistently recognized more outside of the academic community than within it. Others said that Damadian had not acted in the manner of a scientist on many occasions, which alienated the academic community, including when he held a 1977 press conference to announce that his full-body scanner could detect cancer anywhere in the body. Even in modern uses, MRI is not usually used for diagnosis but for location of tumors already diagnosed.

Some consider Damadian to be a controversial figure in academic circles, not least for his exuberant behavior at conferences. [ [http://www.isbe.man.ac.uk/personal/dellard/dje/history_mri/history%20of%20mri.htm The History of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (page 1) ] ] He is also fundamentalist Christian and a young earth creationist [ [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/978/ Biography] from Creation Ministries International] and a member of the 'Technical Advisory Board' of the Institute for Creation Research. [ [http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=research&action=index&page=research_biosci#rdamadian Biography] from the Institute for Creation Research] Philosopher Michael Ruse writing for the Metanexus Institute suggested that Damadian might have been denied a Nobel prize because of his creationist views, saying:

I cringe at the thought that Raymond Damadian was refused his just honor because of his religious beliefs. Having silly ideas in one field is no good reason to deny merit for great ideas in another field. Apart from the fact that this time the Creation Scientists will think that there is good reason to think that they are the objects of unfair treatment at the hands of the scientific community.| M. Ruse [Ruse, M. "The Nobel Prize in Medicine—Was there a religious factor in this year’s (non) selection?" "Metanexus Online Journal", March 16 2004]

Damadian himself said, "Before this happened, nobody ever said to me 'They will not give you the Nobel Prize for Medicine because you are a creation scientist.'... If people were actively campaigning against me because of that, I never knew it."

ee also

*Nobel Prize controversies

References

* James Mattson and Merrill Simon. "The Pioneers of NMR and Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: The Story of MRI." Jericho & New York: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-9619243-1-4.
* Donald P. Hollis. "Abusing Cancer Science: The Truth About NMR and Cancer", Chehalis, WA: Strawberry Fields Press, 1987. ISBN 0-94203315-9.

External links

* [http://www.fonar.com/ FONAR corporate website]
* [http://whyfiles.org/188nobel_mri/ "Nobel Prizefight"]
* [http://www.sri.com/policy/csted/reports/techin/mri3.html The National Science Foundation's history of MRI] . The author cites personal interviews with the principals.
* [http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=5780710 Cope's 1969 paper] on NMR of brain and muscle. Links to early references.
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9906E0DF1F39F931A25754C0A961958260 "Patent Fights Aplenty for M.R.I. Pioneer"] New York Times Article on Damadian.