Which medical imaging technology did Godfrey Hounsfield help invent, earning the 1979 Nobel Prize?

Godfrey Hounsfield helped invent computed tomography, a medical imaging technology recognized by the 1979 Nobel Prize.

Hounsfield, an engineer at EMI, developed a computerized method for reconstructing cross-sectional images from X-ray measurements taken at different angles. The first clinical CT scanner was installed at Atkinson Morley’s Hospital in London, and its first patient scan was performed in 1971 on a patient with a suspected brain lesion.

Allan Cormack independently developed important mathematical methods for the same general problem. Hounsfield and Cormack shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their contributions to computer-assisted tomography.

CT differs from a conventional X-ray because a computer combines many measurements into slice-like images. Modern scanners can create three-dimensional reconstructions, but CT still uses ionizing radiation, unlike MRI.