Award for MRI pioneer
A
Royal Academy of Engineering product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Jun 15, 2004
One of the pioneers of magnetic resonance imaging has been awarded the prestigious Sir Frank Whittle Medal.
Prof Ian Young, OBE, FREng, FRS, one of the pioneers of the diagnostic engineering technology magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has won this year's prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Sir Frank Whittle Medal.
This year awarded for "engineering innovations in medicine", and presented to Professor Young to recognise his contributions to the development and commercialisation of MRI, this is only the fourth time the medal has been bestowed.
As one of the major pioneers of the engineering technology of MRI, Professor Young has worked in the field since 1976, and is still actively engaged at the age of 72.
MRI is an imaging technique used primarily in medical settings to produce high quality images of the inside of the human body.
It is based on the principles of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), a spectroscopic technique used by scientists to obtain chemical and physical information about molecules.
Professor Young was one of two authors who published the first image of a head in 1978 and built the world-first MR machine to use a super-conducting magnet for imaging, an approach now in almost universal use on patients worldwide.
The collaboration at the Hammersmith Hospital between Ian Young as the designer/engineer and the radiologists Prof Robert Steiner and Prof Graeme Bydder contributed substantially to the rapid worldwide acceptance of magnetic resonance imaging in disease diagnosis.
He was able to marry the ideas of the commercial world to the applications of a new science.
He has continued to be very active in MRI, firstly in leading the design of Picker's machines, and later continuing his innovations at the Robert Steiner MRI Unit at Hammersmith Hospital.
These innovations include developing the technology for internal body probes, and other interventional procedures, aided by MRI.
Millions of patients across the world have had much improved diagnoses as a result of Ian Young's work.
In 2003, there were approximately 10,000 MRI units worldwide, and approximately 75 million MRI scans per year are performed Professor Young, who received an OBE in 1987, received his medal at the Academy Awards Dinner last week in London.
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