ABSTRACT

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen's discovery of X-rays was of immense importance and has changed the world, not only in the dimensions of medical science and applications, but in many different ways. The physical fundamentals and the biological effects of the new rays were largely unknown at the end of the nineteenth century. At the beginning, everyone who used X-rays in any way was an experimenter. Differing scientific cultures—medicine, physics, and engineering—came together at this new interface. Regarding the history of the new discipline radiology, the year 1896 played an important role in the development of X-ray diagnosis and in the first applications of radiotherapy. The traditional contrast media have been replaced by modern agents, and X-ray film is disappearing and is being replaced by an electronic image. The introduction of positron emission tomography scanning and, more recently, molecular imaging has led to great advances in functional imaging.