Positron Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital
Gordon L Brownell and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital developed one of the earliest positron imaging devices and in the early 1950s produced human brain images using positron emitters which represented a first step toward tomographic positron imaging and demonstrated the potential of annihilation radiation detection for functional brain studies
Technical Foundations and Early Results
Brownell’s work combined detector development and counting electronics with radiotracer methods and although early instruments were rudimentary they produced images that revealed metabolic and physiologic information not accessible with conventional techniques and these experiments stimulated further instrument development
Path to Tomography and PET
The early positron imaging efforts influenced later tomographic PET systems and researchers such as David Kuhl and others advanced reconstruction methods and detector designs that ultimately produced modern PET which became central to oncology neurology and cardiology