Diagnostic devices

Diagnostic devicesa range of ingenious inventions have allowed doctors to peek painlessly into the human body.

Seeing INSIDE THE BODY to detect disease

X-ray

Did you know? Röntgen called his discovery X-rays after the math symbol for an unknown number. In some languages, they’re known as Röntgen rays.

In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was experimenting with light tubes similar to fluorescent bulbs when, by accident, he discovered mysterious waves of energy he called X-Rays. Röntgen found that they passed through flesh and other soft parts of the body but not through metal or bones. When a special film is placed behind the body, it can capture an X-ray image.

X-rays are now used to help find broken bones and pinpoint foreign objects, such as bullets, inside the body.

Stethoscope ear tips go in the doctor’s ears to transmit your breathing and heartbeat.

Stethoscope

Stethoscopes let doctors check for problems by listening to a patient’s heartbeat and breathing as well as the sound of blood rushing around blood vessels. French doctor René LaenneC invented the first stethoscope, a simple wooden tube, in 1816. Modern stethoscopes have a diaphragm that picks up sounds and makes them louder before they travel to the doctor’s ears.

Ultrasound

Sounds higher than those you can hear are called ultrasound. An ultrasound scanner sends these sounds into a patient’s body. Different types of tissue such as bone or muscle produce a different echo. The machine listens to the different echoes and builds up a picture called an echogram or sonogram. The first sonogram was produced in 1958. Ultrasound is often used to check on babies in the womb.

Fiber-optic endoscope

An endoscope is a narrow, flexible tube that travels inside part of your body so that doctors can take a good look. Researchers at the uniVersity of alabama invented the first fiber-optic endoscope in 1957. They contain bundles of thousands of thin glass fibers, which carry images from inside your body to be displayed on a screen.

Oral thermometers are placed under the tongue to measure temperature. A healthy human body’s temperature is about 98.2°F (36.8°C). Stethoscope diaphragm is placed on the skin closest to the part of the body that the doctor wants to listen to.

MRI scan

When placed in a magnetic field and bombarded with radio waves, atoms in your body answer back. The tiny signals they give off can be gathered and turned into a detailed picture of what’s going on inside the body using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The first MRI scanner to perform a full scan of the body was invented by American professor raymond V. damadian in 1977.