Our latest club meeting featured a delightful talk by our member Dr Cynthia Cowling on the history of medical imaging – not from a technical viewpoint but from a very human perspective. With 50 years’ work in this field, Cynthia used intriguing pics and slides to chart the progress from crude and dangerous x-rays to modern CT-scans and their interpretation aided by artificial intelligence engines.
She struck a chord with older members as she described the X-ray fun machines in post-war shoe shops where customers could look at their feet bones – while getting a dangerous level of radiation. We were pleased to learn that she herself has not been harmfully irradiated during her long career. Modern machines, she says, are so safe their dosage is merely equivalent to an intercity jet flight.