Mobile MIM Radiology App for iPhones and iPads
In early February 2011, the FDA cleared a radiology app for the iPhone and iPad that allows physicians to view medical images, including MRI, CT and PET scans. While the agency says the app, called Mobile MIM, made by MIM Software, has been approved for making medical diagnoses, it says it "is not intended to replace full workstations and is indicated for use only when there is no access to a workstation."
What a wonderful and novel idea this seems to be, X-rays over the phone you might say, but maybe Mobile MIM is not quite as new as you might think.
The field of teleradiology has been around for quite a few years. Since the commercialization and popularization of the internet in the mid 1990's, yes it was less than twenty years ago, transmission of digital data, including medical images, has been evolving at a steady pace. Now for those of us who remember things like "dial up" and who struggled to transmit medical images via high speed 1200 baud modems, or even worse by using analog tone modulation, these pioneering efforts to transmit X-rays over the phone go back into the 1970's. So maybe the Mobile MIM app idea is not that new anymore. However, hold on to your hats, let't go back a few more years.
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The distinguished gentleman in the photograph is none other than Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. He spent a great deal of his time in Baddek Nova Scotia in Canada, where he worked on many projects, now housed at the Bell museum in Baddek. However, the image below is a copy of a page from one of his lab books, dated June 1896, six months after the discovery of X-rays, and it reads:
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"Experiments at lab today to determine whether Roentgen rays can produce sonous effect from radiophonic receiver."
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The diagram shows him exposing his phone to the output of his new X-ray tube, and listening at the other end via a head set. His results are positive,
"Seems to be no doubt about it, but must defer further experiments to some future time".
So there you have it, X-rays over the phone in 1896, maybe a little bit of a stretch to a Mobile MIM app for iPhones and iPads, but there is surely the beginning of a great idea.