Imaging by numbers - the story of nuclear medicine physics research in Southampton

century, we now have many different ways of imaging the body providing complementary information, which is useful in diagnosis and treatment planning. This has been brought about by the application of new physics techniques for imaging, combined with the development of computers. Digital technology not only made these novel techniques practically feasible, but also gave the exciting possibility of processing and analysing the images that were produced. Nuclear medicine imaging, the ability to trace the body’s handling of a radioactive substance, was one of the techniques that emerged over this period. The gamma camera was first invented in the 1950s but it was not until the late 1960s that they began to appear in hospitals in the UK. They enabled the exciting possibility of assessing function of the body to complement anatomical detail available from xrays. The Department of Medical Physics in Southampton wanted to see this new technology applied locally and in the late 1960s set up one of the first autonomous Departments of Nuclear Medicine in the UK. It was led by a specialist nuclear medicine physician supported by a team consisting of a biochemist, medical physicists, technical staff and radiographers. Over the next 40 years, the Department was to have a key role in the development of new techniques and applications of nuclear medicine imaging, which were to have both national and international impact.