Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the latest methods of diagnostic radiology. This method is based on nucleic magnetic resonance, which is known since 1946 when F. Bloch and E. Purcell demonstrated the possibility of this phenomenon. Nucleic magnetic resonance is resonance absorption of electromagnetic energy by a substance containing nuclei with a nonzero spin in an external magnetic field due to the reorientation of the nuclear magnetic moments. In 1952 F. Bloch and E. Purcell received the Nobel prize for the discovery of magnetic resonance.
In 2003, British scientist Sir. Peter Mansfield and his American colleague Paul Lauterbur shared Nobel Prize in medicine for the research of MRI. In the early 1970s, Paul Lauterbur discovered the possibility of obtaining a two-dimensional image by creating a magnetic induction gradient in a magnetic field. Analysing the characteristics of the emitted radio waves, he determined their origin. This allowed creating two-dimensional images that couldn't be obtained by other methods.
Dr. Mansfield developed the research of Lauterbur and therefore established how to analyze the signals that are set by the object under study in the magnetic field. He created a mathematical tool that allows converting these signals into a two-dimensional image.
There were many disputes over the priority of MRI discovery. American physicist Raymond Damadian declared himself the real inventor of MRI and the creator of the first tomography scanner.
However, Vladislav Ivanov developed the principles of magnetic resonance imaging of the human body long before Raymond Damadian. Research, which at that time seemed purely theoretical, found wide practical application in clinical practice in decades (since the 80s of XX century).