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We also have the option of scanning in an image from outside the computer... a photo, or a sketch done with traditional tools; and we can then paint, manipulate, process, change, and further develop the image within the computer, watching our progress on the monitor.

Over the past 50 years we got versions of X-ray specs and space vacations, and even death rays. But the X-ray specs don't fit on your face - they're big things that screen your luggage for guns. Space vacations are real, but they cost $20 million. We have death rays, but you have to be a triple Ph.D. to play with them.

I've always been very interested in the question of how computation can fundamentally advance the things that we can see. This led me to have a fascination with medical imaging, especially things like MRI and scanning, and eventually computer graphics.

During the development of the whole-body CT scanner, it became clear that the availability of an accurate cross-sectional picture of the body, the CT 'slice,' would have an important effect on the precision and implementation of radiotherapy treatment planning.

Archaeologists gave the military the idea to use aerial photographs for spying and field survey. We are fortunate that the spatial and spectral resolutions of the imagery available to us are so broadly useful for archaeology.

Moreover, photography has made it possible to fix these images and now provides us with a permanent record of each observed spectrum, which can be measured out at any time.

Without a computer, every point on a structure has to be calculated with reference to everything else. But by using a PC, I can create complex curves that don't have radii or centers.

We would get 20 different angles and then cut them all together. That's what I called it at the time - the 'cubistic' treatment of shooting football. It was the same thing Picasso did except we did it with a football play. It's taking a single image and looking at it from multiple perspectives.

Broadly speaking, the discovery of X-rays has increased the keenness of our vision ten thousand times, and we can now 'see' the individual atoms and molecules.

A lot of the data we collect is stuff that has to be analyzed on the ground. For instance, we can't see, you know, bone loss. Our cells, you know, that's something that we'll have to notice with imaging technology when I get back.