From numbers to pictures: The development of magnetic resonance imaging and the visual turn in medicine

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Les Levidow, the anonymous reviewer, Laura Mamo, Keith McGowan, Shashwat Pandhi, Celine-Marie Pascale, and T.L. Taylor for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. Special thanks also go to Larry Crooks, Raymond Damadian, Paul Lauterbur, and John Mallard for discussing the early years of MRI research. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science annual meeting in Vienna, Austria in September 2000.

Notes

1. For a thorough introduction to critical studies of visualization, see ‘Chapter Six: Mapping Visual Discourses’ in Clarke (2004). Mirzoeff (1998), Mitchell (1994), and Sturken and Cartwright (2001) also provide excellent discussions of the visual turn in culture.

2. See, for example, Doing's analysis (2003) of labour practices in a synchrotron laboratory. Doing shows how biologists slowly replaced physicists in scheduling and priority hierarchies, and, in doing so, radically restructured knowledge production in the laboratory.

3. There are two ways to measure nuclear magnetic resonance. The first is to vary the external magnetic field while holding the frequency of the oscillator constant. The second is to hold the external magnetic field constant while varying the frequency of the oscillator. In Rabi's first resonance experiment he used the first method. After this, however, he switched to the second method (Mattson and Simon, 1996, pp. 66 and 117).

4. For further discussion of the financial relations that structured MRI development, see Blume (1992, pp. 192–217).

5. The early use of colour images continues to ‘haunt’ some contemporary MRI images. Occasionally, a very low signal is produced during an MRI exam. Some scanners, using a coding practice left over from earlier machine designs, still translate this signal into the colour red. The low signal thus appears as red dribbles above and below the anatomy in the image. Scientists jokingly call these distortions ‘bleeding artefacts’, using humour to trouble cultural boundaries that distinguish between the image as inanimate and the body as life (Crooks, 2000).

6. Scientists and physicians outside of the US still resist this change. In my research, European physicians and scientists spontaneously discussed how the name of NMR imaging became MRI imaging, using terms such as ‘self indulgence’ and ‘American silliness’ to describe the change. These scientists expressed impatience with the way the rest of the world is expected to adjust to what is happening in the United States. Their critique calls attention to the techno-scientific forms of imperialism that structure the production of new technologies.

7. Donna Haraway (1997) examines the move from a Cold War, physics-centred scientific practice to what she calls a New World Order, biology-based practice. Haraway shows how funding for biotechnology and genetic research increased in the 1980s and 1990s as interest in genetics and medical images replaced the mid-twentieth century fascination with the atom.