The History of Nuclear Medicine

The nuclear medicine began with most notably discover of the x-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Rentgen, and the second important discovery of the "artificial radioactivity" in 1934.
Marie and Pierie Curie were working with the radium element, they notice that diseased cell in the blood of laboratory animals was killed by the radiation that emitted from the radium; they immediately understood the medical potential of the discovery.
The first time that cancer was treated successfully was in 1946, it was a thyroid cancer that treated with radioactive iodine.
A few years later in the early 1950 the clinical use of the cancer treatment became wide-spread.
The iodine was at the beginning the most used isotope, it used for diagnosing thyroid cancer, and still use today.
Use of radioactive tracer, Georg von Hevesey studied in 1923 the biological system of plants by following the tracers from the root of the plants to the live.
In 1929, Ernest O.Lawrence, invented the cyclotron, it used to create radioisotopes, he accelerate atoms in order to make a collision with other atom, the result was new particles. For doing it he needed high energy voltage supply that was not possible to achieve. He thought about using a magnetic field, in order to bend the particle course and make it become spiral that way in each circle the particle will get more energy.
Using an advanced cyclotron, some scientists produced iron-59, with this isotope it was possible to learn about the hemoglobin in the human blood.
In 1938, Seaborg and Emilio serge discovered the isotope technetium 99m. This is one of the most common use radioisotopes these days.
At 1953 the first positron detector was built, it was based on the pair production principle, that two photons eject in opposite direction.
The technological developments brought that in the 1970 it was possible to visualize and scan the most of the body organs like liver, spleen, brain.
In the 1970s the use of computers brought new imaging techniques to the nuclear physician, it allowed for a better analysis of images and lead to the development of topographic or three dimensional imaging.

references:
http://www.snm.org/nuclear/history.html
http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/webprojects2002/wrigglesworth/background.htmhttp://www.atomicmuseum.com/tour