Oldendorf, William

Oldendorf, William

Oldendorf, William DJ Lanska, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Great Lakes VA Healthcare System, Tomah, WI, USA r 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserv...

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Oldendorf, William DJ Lanska, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Great Lakes VA Healthcare System, Tomah, WI, USA r 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction

recognizing the radiolucencies associated with the dehydrated frostbitten areas.

American neurologist and psychiatrist William Henry Oldendorf (1925–92) demonstrated the feasibility of computerized tomography (CT) as early as 1961, more than a decade before the first commercial CT scanners were developed by English electrical engineer Godfrey N. Hounsfield (1919– 2004) at EMI Ltd.

Training and Career Oldendorf was born in Schenectady, New York, the youngest of four children. He attended Union College in Schenectady, NY, USA, and received his medical degree from Albany Medical College in 1947. Oldendorf completed a psychiatry residency through the New York State Department of Mental Health Residency Training Program after which he enlisted in the US Navy, serving for 2 years as a medical officer at the US Naval Hospital in Newport, RI, USA. He then completed a fellowship in neurology at the University of Minnesota and was subsequently certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology as a diplomate in both specialties. In 1956, Oldendorf joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the staff of the UCLAaffiliated Veterans Administration Medical Center. At the time of his death, he was a professor of both neurology and psychiatry at UCLA, and director of the I. Arthur Mirsky Neuroscience Laboratory at the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center. As Louis Jolyon West (1924–99), former Chairman of Psychiatry at UCLA, and colleagues have noted, Oldendorf was a personable colleague and an industrious, enthusiastic, and creative investigator: Despite his enormous knowledge, numerous accomplishments, and hard-working habits, Oldendorf remained accessible, goodhumored, and open to the ideas of others. Never arrogant, he pursued his scientific quests with an almost childlike enthusiasm. He loved the intellectual challenge of exploring the brain and its mechanisms, and could propose a seemingly endless series of experiments to explore a daunting problem. Science for him was like a wonderful game, and he loved to play that game.

Neuroimaging Oldendorf’s interest in neuroimaging developed from his frustration with performing the ‘primitive procedures’ then available (e.g., pneumoencephalography and angiography via direct carotid puncture) and his hope that it would be possible to devise a ‘‘technique that would yield direct information about [the] brain without traumatizing it.’’ At a social gathering in 1958, he heard an engineer describing his efforts to devise a commercial method to reject frostbitten oranges by

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[It] occurred to me that it might be possible to consider the orange analogous to a head and the dehydrated spots to internal structural details of the brain. Perhaps by a more elaborate scanning pattern and by more sophisticated analysis of the absorption of an X-ray beam the actual structural pattern of the interior of the head could be defined, rather than having a simple detection of the presence or absence of some internal nonuniformity.

Oldendorf subsequently developed a process to visualize the complex internal structure of an object from projections of its radioactivity absorption pattern. By 1960, he improvised a demonstration of the idea that was published in a biomedical engineering journal in 1961, unfortunately with a very cumbersome title, which he later acknowledged ‘‘rather guaranteed the paper’s obscurity.’’ Using inexpensive materials he found at home (including his son’s toy train flatcar and track, a phonograph turntable, a discarded spring-driven alarm clock motor, and some nails), Oldendorf demonstrated a method of reconstructing cross-sectional images from a series of onedimensional projections. In 1963, Oldendorf received a US patent for a ‘‘radiant energy apparatus for investigating selected areas of interior objects obscured by dense material.’’ This work was later recognized by Hounsfield as the only other attempt at tomographic reconstruction before Hounsfield’s Nobel prize-winning work. Unfortunately, Oldendorf’s proposals for commercial development were repeatedly rejected. Indeed, the president of one leading X-ray equipment manufacturer summarily dismissed his proposal with the following short-sighted response: Even if it could be made to work as you suggest, we cannot imagine a significant market for such an expensive apparatus, which would do nothing but make a radiographic cross-section of a head.

Frustrated, and with no apparent avenue to develop this idea further, Oldendorf turned his attention to other scientific work. Oldendorf later wrote several monographs concerning neuroimaging, most notably The Quest for an Image of the Brain: Computerized Tomography in the Perspective of Past and Future Imaging Methods (1980). Oldendorf was also instrumental in the organization and founding of the Society for Computerized Tomography in 1976. He served as president from 1978 to 1979, and later pushed for a wider mandate for the organization, which with Oldendorf’s persistent prodding and leadership ultimately became the American Society for Neuroimaging in 1981.

Cerebral Blood Flow and the Blood–Brain Barrier Oldendorf also developed original methods to measure cerebral blood flow and the kinetics of the blood–brain barrier

Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences, Volume 3

doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-385157-4.00844-7

Oldendorf, William

using radioactive isotopes, work which was critical to the development of now-standard techniques in nuclear medicine. Using these techniques, Oldendorf characterized more than a dozen separate carrier systems across the blood–brain barrier and measured their saturation kinetics. Oldendorf’s studies of the selective permeability of the blood–brain barrier were critical in understanding brain metabolism in health and disease, and the delivery of pharmaceuticals to the brain. This work also facilitated the later development of positron emission tomography and single photon emitted computed tomography imaging.

Recognition and Legacy Among his many awards, in 1974, he shared with Hounsfield the first Ziedses des Plantes Gold Medal given by the German Society of Neuroradiology and the Medical Physics Society of Wurzburg. Oldendorf and Hounsfield were also awarded the Albert and Mary Lasker Award for Clinical Research in 1975, and Oldendorf was cited for ‘‘concepts and experiments, which directly anticipated and demonstrated the feasibility of computerized tomography, which has revolutionized the field of neurological diagnosis.’’ In 1981, he received the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service and was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded honorary doctorates from Albany Medical College (1982), Union College (1982), and St. Louis University (1986). In 1991, he became the first neurologist ever elected to the US National Academy of Sciences. Nobel laureate Rosalyn Yalow (1921–2011) had nominated Oldendorf for the Nobel prize for his contributions to the development of CT, but the prize in 1979 was instead controversially awarded only to Hounsfield and to South Africanborn American physicist Allan McLeod Cormack (1924–98) for their roles in the development of computed tomography. After Oldendorf’s unexpected death from heart disease, West stated in a eulogy, ‘‘Bill’s mind was Einstein’s universe, finite, but boundless. Always reaching into spheres you wouldn’t imagine.’’ In his honor, The Oldendorf Award is given annually by the American Society of Neuroimaging.

See also: Dandy, Walter Edward. Hounsfield, Godfrey N. Lauterbur, Paul. Moniz, Egaz

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Further Reading Broad WJ (1980) Riddle of the Nobel debate. Science 207: 37–38. Mazziotta JC and Collins RC (1993) William H. Oldendorf, M.D. (1925–1992). Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography 17: 169–171. Oldendorf WH (1961a) Isolated flying spot detection of radiodensity discontinuities–displaying the internal structural pattern of a complex object. Biomedical Engineering 8: 68–72. Oldendorf WH (1961b) Measurement of cerebral blood flow by external collimation following intravenous injection of radioisotope. IRE Transactions on BioMedical Electronics 8: 173–177. Oldendorf WH (1962) Measurement of the mean transit time of cerebral circulation by external detection of an intravenously injected radioisotope. Journal of Nuclear Medicine 3: 382–398. Oldendorf WH (1964) Prolonged brain circulation time in cerebrovascular disease. Transactions of the American Neurological Association 89: 165–168. Oldendorf WH (1978) The quest for an image of the brain: A brief historical and technical review of brain imaging techniques. Neurology 28: 517–533. Oldendorf W (1980) The Quest for an Image of the Brain: Computerized Tomography in the Perspective of Past and Future Imaging Methods. New York: Raven Press. Oldendorf WH and Crandall PH (1961) Bilateral cerebral circulation curves obtained by intravenous injection of radioisotopes. Journal of Neurosurgery 18: 195–200. Oldendorf WH, Crandall PH, Nordyke RA, and Rose AS (1960) A comparison of the arrival in the cerebral hemispheres of intravenously injected radioisotope. A preliminary report. Neurology 10: 223–227. Oldendorf WH and Kitano M (1964) The free passage of I-131 antipyrine through brain as an indication of A–V shunting. Neurology 14: 1078–1083. Oldendorf WH and Kitano M (1965) Increased brain radiocopper uptake in Wilson’s disease. Archives of Neurology 13: 533–540. Oldendorf WH and Kitano M (1967) Radioisotope measurement of brain blood turnover time as a clinical index of brain circulation. Journal of Nuclear Medicine 8: 570–587. Oldendorf WH and Szabo J (1976) Amino acid assignment to one of three bloodbrain barrier amino acid carriers. American Journal of Physiology 230: 94–98. Wolpert SM (2000) Neuroradiology classics. American Journal of Neuroradiology 21: 605–606.

Relevant Website http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb0h4n99rb&doc.view=content&chunk. id=div00058&toc.depth=1&brand=calisphere&anchor.id=0 Calisphere.