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Godfrey Hounsfield, UK, patents from 1968. X-rays computed into slices won a Nobel.

Overview

EMI's Hounsfield, funded partly by Beatles record profits, patented computed tomography from 1968 and scanned a patient's head in 1971. Allan Cormack's independent math shared the 1979 Nobel. The first machines cost theaters of money but found bleeds and tumors no flat film could. EMI lost the market to GE and Siemens as patents licensed thin. Hounsfield units still calibrate every scan read today. Radiology became three-dimensional from this filing.