10 October 2022
The BIR Godfrey Hounsfield Memorial Lecture was delivered by Dr Thomas Flohr at the BIR Annual Congress at the Royal College of Physicians on 22 September 2022 and the award was presented after his talk on “A brief history of computed tomography – from Hounsfield’s brain scanner to photon counting CT”. Dr Flohr is Associate Professor of Medical Physics at the University of Tubingen. He was presented with his award by President Dr Sri Redla and President Elect Professor Stephen Keevil.
In keeping with the theme of the Congress “Looking Back to the Future: 125 years of BIR” Dr Flohr’s talk reflected back to the early days of CT, the evolution of the modality right through to the application of photon counting CT in cardiovascular and thoracic imaging. He went on to describe the potential for photon-counting for coronary CTA as, with its high spatial resolution, photon-counting CT can overcome the challenge of providing diagnostic images despite severe calcifications. He also explained the benefits of its use for plaque characterisation.
Dr Flohr said “I am proud to build on the work of Godfrey Hounsfield, to whom we owe so much and I am delighted to receive this special award which bears his name.”
Dr Sri Redla said “This was a fascinating journey through the history CT imaging but above all gave us an expert and inciteful taste of the future of radiology from one of the top scientists in this field.”
Established in 1997 in honour of Sir Godfrey Hounsfield and his pioneering work in computed tomography, this lecture was initially endowed by Dr Marion Frank OBE, and subsequently funded by a bequest from Sir Godfrey Hounsfield.
The lecture is now freely available to all here
