MRI – A First Encounter Professor Christopher Winearls

Sir Martin and Lady Audrey Wood with their first superconductor magnet 1984 0.5T Superman magnet

MRI – A First Encounter

Sir Martin Wood

Professor Christopher Winearls

(Keble College, 1972)

“Sir Martin Wood, founder of Oxford Instruments, a trailblazing university tech start-up that enabled the first MRI whole body scanner, died on November 23rd 2021.”

So read The Times obituary. I encountered that scanner in 1982 at the Hammersmith Hospital. It was being evaluated by a pioneering academic radiologist, Professor Robert Steiner (another example of “Hitler’s Gift,” this one from Vienna to Ireland and then to the United Kingdom.*)

The patient was a 14 year old girl, who had bilateral facial palsies. Her GP remembered the association of this with hypertension, described by Sir John McMichael, (who incidentally had appointed Robert Steiner to his chair.) The BP was very high, so he referred her to the Professor of Medicine where, as was usual, she was seen by the Senior Registrar, me. The blood pressure was 230/150, the fundi Grade 4 and there was a left renal mass. I requested an IVU but Robert said,” “I will do something much better – an NMR scan.” “A what?” said I. He explained. It was a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Image. I feigned comprehension. The NMR showed a tumour. The pictures were remarkable. He said, “You do not need anything more.“ I begged for conventional imaging but he was adamant. The urologists insisted so Robert relented, and we got an IVU and CT out of him. Because the renins were high we took samples from the IVC and the renal veins and bits of the tumour for every kind of examination and stored them. The tumour was removed and proved to be an adenocarcinoma. Our patient who made a complete recovery, was written up as a Lesson of the Week in the BMJ where it was spotted by a pathologist, Dr George Lindop who immediately flew from Glasgow to London to scoop up the samples. He demonstrated that the tumour had a population of granular cells containing immunoreactive renin.

Before I presented this case on the Medical Staff Round, I asked whether I should try to explain how nuclear magnetic resonance could produce a picture. “Not necessary – everybody knows exactly how it works.” This was, I knew, not strictly true of me, nor I suspect of my then boss.

NMRs were renamed MRIs because the word Nuclear frightened the patients. I never met Sir Martin Wood but if I had I would have told him about meeting his “Gift,” to medicine.

“...“I will do something much better – an NMR scan.”

“A what?” said I

*Hitler’s Gift is Jean Medawar and David Pyke’s account of scientists who were expelled, fled or rescued from Nazi persecution, to the UK.