Cerebral angiography (Egas Moniz)
Angiografía cerebral (Egas Moniz)
- Date
- 1927 · confidence high
- Place
- Lisbon, Portugal
- Credited to
- António Egas Moniz and Almeida Lima
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
In 1927 Egas Moniz and his collaborator Almeida Lima injected a radiopaque contrast into the carotid artery and obtained the first X-ray image of the cerebral vessels. It made it possible to locate tumours, aneurysms and malformations without opening the skull.
Moniz tried strontium bromide in 1926 and sodium iodide in 1927; he later adopted Thorotrast, a radioactive contrast that caused tumours and was abandoned. He received the Nobel Prize (1949) for leucotomy, not for angiography.
What it led to
- carotid arteriography and the diagnosis of tumours and aneurysms
- neuroradiology as a specialty
- the basis of modern cerebral angiography (CT and MR with contrast)