The story of Nuclear Medicine at Ohio State begins with William G Myers; in fact, much of the early history of the specialty of Nuclear Medicine begins with Dr Myers. Dr Myers was born in 1911 on a farm near Toledo Ohio. His parents divorced early in his childhood, and he spent some time in an orphanage, ultimately rejoining his remarried father on a rural subsistence homestead in Alberta, Canada. His early education was spotty, but he was able to support himself as a reporter on the Denver Post and a real estate photographer for the county assessor when he left home at age 17. He rejoined his family when they moved to Detroit one year later, worked in an auto factory, and enrolled in Wassau High School. He excelled, graduating in 1930 first in his class and winning a competitive tuition scholarship to The Ohio State University in Columbus. He studied chemistry and supplemented his income cutting hair and competitively boxing intramurally for prize money, winning an intramural championship in 1932, and a broken nose. He earned an MS in Physical Chemistry in 1937, a PhD in 1939, and an MD at the College of Medicine in 1941. There he heard a lecture on possible medical applications of the Cyclotron, newly invented by John Lawrence, given by the inventor’s brother Ernest. This lecture inspired Dr Myers lifelong research pursuit.
The departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Engineering acquired an early cyclotron, with Dr Myers the initiator and then operator. Myers was hired as a Research Professor of Medical Biophysics. He received the first Julius F Stone Research Associate Fellowship for research in the medical applications of the Cyclotron in 1945, and in 1953, he became the Julius F Stone Professor of Biophysics. With the Ohio State Cyclotron and the more powerful cyclotrons at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, where he also conducted research, Dr Myers discovered 11 radioactive isotopes useful in medicine for diagnosis and therapy - more than any other person. These were, in order of discovery; Cobalt-60, Gold-198, Chromium-51, Iodine-125, Strontium-87, Iodine-123, Iodine-121, Strontium-85, Carbon-11, Potassium-38, and Krypton-79. He was called the “Godfather of the Medical Cyclotron” and was recognized around the world. It was his opinion, that eventually every hospital would have a medical cyclotron.
The isotopes produced by cyclotrons have an excess of protons and decay by either electron capture or by emitting a positron (positively charged, electron size particle) from the nucleus of the atom. Positrons do not exist in our natural world, and once emitted, they almost instantly join with an electron, the combination instantly converting from matter to energy in the form of two 511 KEV photons. The photons, which are energy waves, emit in opposite directions, and if both are detected simultaneously, it allows back projection to determine the line along which the emission occurred. If the emissions are detected by an instrument which captures the whole volume of disintegrations, the point of origin can be determined. This is the principal of the PET scanner. PET stands for “positron emission tomography”, Dr Meyers unsuccessfully argued for the more accurately descriptive term “positron electron transmutation” because it is not positrons that are imaged.
The mathematics enabling PET imaging were developed and published long before the first PET scanner was made by Michel Ter-Pogossian in 1975 at Washington University St Louis. The same mathematics supported Computed Tomographic (CT) imaging. The original inventor of the CT scanner, Hounsfield at EMI (1972) could not defend a patent because the enabling mathematics were already in the literature, and other companies quickly made CT scanners, allowing X-ray technology to progress with lightning speed. Dr Myers' isotopes made important contributions in cancer, hematology, renal, endocrine, cardiac, gastrointestinal, physiology, pathology, and basic medical science. While, at the time, there was no “PET” imaging, these isotopes could be localized as tracers by imaging
one of the 511-Kev photons with scanners and pinhole collimators.
When it came to the medical application of radionuclides, Dr Meyers was anti-hierarchical and libertarian concerning formal administration, and he welcomed participation by any physicians so inclined. Clinical nuclear medicine practice at Ohio State was distributed around the medical center in urology, endocrinology, gastrointestinal, hematology, cardiology, surgery, pathology, radiation therapy and radiology.
There is an iconic (1953?) photo in National Geographic Magazine of Drs. Doan and Meyers treating a thyroid patient with a “radioactive cocktail”. Despite this, Dr Meyers had little personal interest in actual patient care. He taught a popular course on radioactivity, the first in the Western Hemisphere, which was attended by most of the leaders in radiology
and nuclear medicine from around the country and, in fact, from around the world, as well as Ohio State faculty residents, and students. He described his interest as being in “FUNdamental research”, with an emphasis on the first three letters: Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen which are the foundational building blocks of life. The positron emitting isotopes Carbon 11, Nitrogen 13, and Oxygen 15 could be produced in the cyclotron and had very short half-lives, making them excellent imaging agents. He showed that cancers were hyper-metabolic and had a tremendous affinity for these three isotopes.
His images of animals bearing cancer caught the attention of Dr Arthur James, who learned from him how important PET could be in cancer diagnosis and staging. As Dr James conceived his Cancer Hospital, he determined that PET and a medical cyclotron would be a part of it. Dr James was a medical school classmate of Myers' wife Florence; both
members of the1940 class. Dr Meyers who graduated in1941, met Florence in anatomy lab, and they married in 1940.
The post was authored by Dr. John Olsen who was the Director of Nuclear Medicine in the Department of Radiology at the Ohio State University.
