Chapter 05: Discovering How to Image a Beating Heart; Reflections on Radiology’s Shift in Focus from Form to Function

Dr. Podoloff first notes that the Diagnostic Clinic conducted more cardiac scans than MD Anderson at the time he joined the institution. In the remainder of this segment, Dr. Podoloff explains how he conducted a bone scan on a patient and then a brain scan shortly after, and this led him to discover a process to image a beating heart. The brain scan showed not the brain tissue, but the vessels. Researchers at Harvard University published this technique –the MUGA labeling technique-- however he was recognized as an innovator. Dr. Podoloff then comments on his academic connections while he was in private practice: he served as Clinical Associate Professor of Nuclear Medicine and Radiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston from 1976-1985. He comments on how advances such as the MUGA technique have shifted radiology’s focus from the form of organs to physiological processes.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1730/thumbnail.jp