Episode 1027: Greatest American Inventions — The MRI Scanner

For most of human history, seeing inside a living body meant surgery. Newt tells how Dr. Raymond Damadian and physicist Paul Lauterbur turned 1940s nuclear magnetic resonance research into the MRI scanner-a machine that images soft tissue in astonishing detail without radiation or a single incision. From Damadian's hand-built "Indomitable" scanner to today's 40 million annual U.S. procedures, this…