[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Why do you suppose name of the medical imaging technique was changed from
"NMR" = "nuclear magnetic resonance" to "MRI" = "magnetic resonance
imaging"? The word "nuclear" in the former name did not refer to
radioactivity being involved anywhere in the process, but to the fact that
the process works by causing the _atomic nuclei_ in the molecules in the
body of the person being scanned to vibrate in resonance with the magnetic
field generated by the big magnet surrounding the imaging chamber.
There was another reason (I was there, I should know, we at New York Hospital
had one of the first superconducting MR scanners in the country). The word
Nuclear implied to some that NMR should be part of Nuclear Medicine. Those of
us in diagnostic radiology didn't want this to happen. So we changed the
name!
