Stony Brook Research

• RESEARCH MILESTONES
• Painless Colonoscopy
• Nobel Prize for MRI
• Protein Folding Simulation
• First Virus Synthesis
• Dino Bird
• Only One With Two CATs
• Managing a National Lab
• First Two SUNY Drugs
• Most Distant Galaxies
• Finding the Top Quark
• Unlocking the Gene
• Finding the Missing Link
• Cause of Lyme Disease
• Life by the Numbers
• Origin of the Ozone Hole
• The Age of the Moon
• Protecting the Environment

Prof. Lauterbur receiving the Nobel Prize in Sweden

Nobel Prize Recognizes MRI's Start at Stony Brook
Some three decades after Nature published the results of Paul Lauterbur’s work at Stony Brook, his seminal contribution to the birth of MRI as the fundamental diagnostic tool we know today was recognized with the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. While others had speculated that the magnetic resonance signals of atoms could help distinguish cancerous tumors from benign human cells, Prof. Lauterbur figured out how to locate these tissues within the body and create a two-dimensional picture of them, laying the foundation for actual clinical use. By introducing gradients in the magnetic field, he could determine the origins of radio waves absorbed then emitted by the nuclei by analyzing their characteristics and thereby develop images of soft tissues and other structures that could not be visualized with other methods.

As described by the National Academy of Sciences, “Lauterbur’s groundbreaking idea was to superimpose on the spatially uniform static magnetic field a second weaker magnetic field that varied with position in a controlled fashion . . . . Because the resonance frequency of nuclei in an external magnetic field is proportional to the strength of the field, different parts of the sample would have different resonance frequencies. Thus, a given resonance frequency could be associated with a given position.” He found through experimentation how to convert the differences in the varying resonance frequencies in an object — including a clam his daughter retrieved from Setauket Harbor near the campus — into an image. By 1974, he produced an image of the thoracic cavity of a living mouse.

MRI’s capacity to image soft tissue at higher resolutions than previous technologies extends the range of diagnostic, therapeutic and pre-operative imaging to most of the organs of the body. It is especially valuable for detailed imaging of the brain and the spinal cord and particularly useful for cancer — where it provides a high level of precision for preoperative surgical planning — multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and most forms of lower back pain. There are over 22,000 MRI installations around the world and they are used for more than 60 million examinations annually.