16 February 2010

The origin of nuclear medicine

Part 1 - The origin of nuclear medicine:

George de Hevesy (1885-1966) became the founder of nuclear medicine through his research at the Niels Bohr Institute and in collaboration with Niels Bohr in the period from the 1920s to the early 1940s. George de Hevesy a Hungarian nobleman and educated in physical chemistry at the Universities of Vienna and Freiburg.

Doctorate at the age of 23

He was born in 1885 in Budapest, where he also began his university studies in the early 1900s, but after only a year he transferred to the Technical University in Berlin, Germany, and he ended up studying at several universities around Europe before finishing his education with a doctorate at the age of 23 in 1908.

Parliament building in Budapest. — The Parliament Building in Budapest drawn around the year 1900.

In 1912, Hevesy was on a research visit with the famous Professor Ernest Rutherford in Manchester when he met the same aged Niels Bohr, who was also a guest of Rutherford. The two became friends.

It was also here that Hevesy discovered the basic principles for the indicator technique, which later evolved into nuclear medicine.

An impossible problem

The renowned professor of physics from Manchester University, Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), who in 1912 set George de Hevesy to work with the experiments that were the beginning of what later evolved into nuclear medicine.

Rutherford set Hevesy the challenge to separate Radium-D from lead. Radium-D is an isotope of lead, that is, it has the chemical properties of lead, but with a different mass of the most common.

It was not known at the time and the problem is that you cannot separate a single lead-isotope from the rest of the lead by purely chemical methods. So it was something of an impossible task Ernest Rutherford had given Hevesy.

Hevesy and many others in Europe worked in vain on the problem, but Hevesy was the first who, instead of looking at the lack of success as a defeat, turned a negative result into a significant discovery.

Hevesy’s simple and ingenious idea was that the radioactive Radium-D, which could not be separated from the lead, could be detected in the body and thus could be used as an indicator or tracer for lead.

Trace elements in the mashed potatoes

The indicator technique, where the radioactive lead is used as an indicator for the lead’s physical, chemical, physiological and biological behaviour was the foundation for what later evolved into nuclear medicine. In 1912, when Hevesy discovered the indicator principle, it was a very important discovery and it still is.

Rumour has it that George de Hevesy took his boarding house landlady by surprise, when he revealed that she had been serving the same food several days in a row.

But the method could also be used for more than just medical experiments ...

It is said that Hevesy used the indicator principle by placing a bit of Radium-D in the mashed potatoes he got warmed-up day after day at the English boarding house where he lived.

Hevesy was used to better as a Hungarian nobleman and had asked to not be served reheated leftovers.

The landlady denied that she served leftovers, but using the indicator technique, Hevesy could prove that the Radium-D he had put in the mashed potatoes on Thursday appeared on the dinner table again on Friday.

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Nuclear medicine

Nuclear medicine is the medical specialty in which radioactive tracers are used for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, for example, where patients are scanned in so-called SPECT and PET scanners.

Worldwide, around two million patients are scanned every year using nuclear medicine techniques.

Niels Bohr’s atomic model was published in three famous articles in 1913 and more than 100 years later, we can look back on a groundbreaking contribution to the understanding of nature that was the start of a social development on a scale comparable to the changes Newton’s “Principia” from 1686 created with the industrial revolution.

Our daily lives in the year 2013 are heavily dependent on the products of quantum physics, with micro-electronics, microprocessors, personal computers, giant computers for predicting the weather, mobile phones, CD players, flat screens and the laser technology of CD players, telecommunications equipment, surgical instruments, pointers, range finders and much, much more.

Only the availability of time prevents the listing of the unrivalled breakthroughs that are directly derived from Bohr’s discovery. More than 30 % of US gross domestic product can be attributed to Niels Bohr’s three articles from 1913.

The atomic model and nuclear medicine

The relationship between Bohr’s discovery and nuclear medicine deserves special attention. Nuclear medicine is the medical discipline in which radioactive tracers are used for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, for example, where patients are scanned in so-called SPECT and PET scanners.

It is important to make the correct diagnosis so the patient can get the right treatment. Worldwide, around 2 million patients are scanned every year using nuclear medicine techniques.