Quotations from 2005

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>>(cf. the shift from "nuclear magnetic resonance" to "magnetic
>>resonance imaging").
>
>As a Chem. E. by education, I KNO that the former is the actual
>technology utilized (aka NMR) and as a stroke survivor who has
>undergone umpteen scans of the cacophonous procedure, the latter has
>always been used as the applied technology vis-a-vis nuclear medicine
>(now THERE'S scary nomenclature if every I've heard any), that is the
>application of magnetic resonance to the imaging discipline, the
>"nuclear" tacitly implied.

"MRI" has not always been used for the imaging procedure. In the early days
the straightforward "NMR" was used in radiology, just as it is used in
chemistry. There were various arguments for and against various terms (such
as "zeugmatography", proposed as a parallel to "ultrasonography",
"radiography", "tomography", etc.). It was suggested by some that the term
"nuclear" was unnecessarily restrictive, and that some day MR might include
medical imaging based on electron spin resonance, for example.

As for the reasoning behind the shift in preference from "NMR" to "MRI"
(during the 1980's IIRC), I believe the reason for the "I" = "imaging" is
simple: radiology departments favored this nomenclature to support their
position that the technique should fall under control of radiology/imaging
departments (rather than that of competing neurology departments etc.).

The reason for the loss of the "N" = "nuclear" is less clear. I believe the
most usual rationale was that the public might be put off by the word
"nuclear". Possibly this was really a factor in some minds. However: just
as the typical radiology department has an MRI section, it has a nuclear
medicine section too (providing e.g. bone scans, thyroid scans, PET scans).
Is there ANY department which changed the name of its nuclear medicine
section during the same period to avoid the word "nuclear"? Surely not
many; I don't know of one. [There are some nuclear medicine departments
named "Department of Molecular Imaging" etc. but I think this is much more
recent.] Some institutions (including particularly many large and
influential ones) have independent nuclear medicine departments distinct
from radiology; it may be that in the early days of NMR imaging some
nuclear medicine departments sought (maybe even won) control of the new
technology by arguing that it was "nuclear": the competing radiology
departments perhaps responded by throwing their weight behind a
nomenclature without the word "nuclear".

I suppose one could find articles or editorials on this nomenclature
controversy in journals such as "Radiology" or "JNM" from the early 1980's.

-- Doug Wilson