WILTIMS #495: The Beatle-CT Connection

Today we had an optional lecture near the end of the day that was meant for the senior residents and was way, way over the heads of med students like myself. One classmate and I decided to go anyways (since we had to be in that room after the lecture anyway) and we ended up getting a little heart-to-heart time with a neuroradiologist. He told me a story that I could barely believe and knew I'd have to fact check before sharing with anyone. Turns out it was totally true!

TIL: Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the CT scanner, funded his first prototype with the EMI record company's profits from the Beatles. Here's a quote from this 2005 In Memorium post in the journal Radiology:

"EMI, at that time, were concerned principally with the manufacture of records and electronic components and had no experience of radiological equipment. The Beatles, who recorded under the EMI label provided the most significant financial input to the company. The Department of Health and Social Security (DHHS)—as it was then—was approached by Hounsfield and radiologists James Ambrose and Louis Kreel and with commendable foresight agreed to support, with EMI, the development of a head scanner. Hounsfield and a small team were installed in the radiological department of the Atkinson Morley’s Hospital in Wimbledon—a location chosen to avoid wide spread publicity in the development phase. The Consultant Radiologist, James Ambrose, provided clinical advice and conducted the first clinical trials on a prototype EMI head scanner (Mark I) in 1972. The first clinical image of a patient with a suspected brain lesion revealed the presence and location of a cystic tumour."