Compiled by Nima Kasraie

The first x-ray units to be imported to Iran are those purchased by a certain Ebrahim Khan Sahhafbashi, during the Constitutionalist era of Iran in the early 1900s.[1] There is also an account of an x-ray unit operating at Sina Hospital in Tehran in 1924.[7] In 1930, the first attempts to construct an X-ray unit were made by Mahmoud Hessabi (a renowned physicist in Iran) at the Daneshsaray-e Alee Institute in Tehran, using technical know-how from French colleagues at The Sorbonne.[6]

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The wide use of radiation emitting equipment in medicine in Iran dates back to 1960 when efforts were made to quantify in-vivo Iodine at Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS). Back then, foreign experts from developed nations, namely Malcolm Cuthbert Nokes (from Great Britain), Dr. Van Heerden (from South Africa), Dr. Hisada (from Japan), and others were active in radiological and nuclear medicine projects in Iran and played a major role in advancing the field in the country.

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In 1961 Sadegh Nezam Mafi, began research with a thyroid scanner at Tehran’s Rhazes Hospital and went on to become Iran’s ‘father of nuclear medicine’. In 1966, Iran’s first nuclear medicine clinic opened at TUMS, which was equipped with an Anger camera. Iran’s first gamma camera was actually a gift that originated from a British company by the name of EKCO (E.K. Cole Ltd.) in 1962. [2]

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During this time, outside Iran, an Iranian trained physician by the name of Abass Alavi, who was a student and a member of David Kuhl's team, was making cutting edge advances in SPECT and molecular imaging. He went on to become a pioneer in PET tracer development several years later at The University of Pennsylvania. Shown below is one of the first ever whole-brain (planar) and tomographic FDG images of brain function of a normal volunteer revealing high concentrations of the agent in cortical and subcortical gray matter.[4]

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