Dr. Thomas Meaney smiling, looking at the camera, sitting in front of a computed tomography scanner.

Photo: Cleveland Clinic Archives

The British conglomerate EMI gave the world not only the Beatles, but the CT (computed tomography) scanner.

In 1973, Thomas Meaney, MD, Chair of Radiology at Cleveland Clinic, went to England to check out the new technology, which provided cross-sectional anatomical images. Impressed, he purchased a CT scanner — one of only four in existence at the time — for his employer. A decade later, Cleveland Clinic also became an early adopter of magnetic resonance imaging after Dr. Meaney acquired an MRI machine.