RETICULUM

Calendar / Announcements 1998

Intimate Portraits: Body Imaging Technologies in Medicine & Culture

San Francisco, California, USA
4 April 1998

An international conference with the participation of historians and members of UCSF's pioneers in imaging techniques. In recent decades, medical imaging has created a new visual culture through new techniques of bodily representation. The aims of this conference are the examination of such novel ways of exposing the human body within the contexts of medicine, technology, and popular culture.

In recent decades, medical imaging has created a new visual culture through techniques of bodily representation. Modernist concepts of "optical dissection" and "the penetrating gaze" have taken on new meanings in the age of computer-assisted and high-tech postmodern body imaging. This interdisciplinary conference will examine both the technical and human aspects of these novel ways of seeing the body. Drawing from the fields of medicine, technology, patient narratives, and popular culture, presenters and panelists will explore our collective fascination with techniques of visibility, interrogating these techniques for their social, political, and historical meanings.

To what extent do body imaging technologies merely extend existing powers of analysis and surveillance in medicine and to what extent do they represent historically new forms of these practices? How have these new techniques, which have changed the way doctors intervene in patient's lives, changed our conceptions of disease? Of life and death? How do these techniques of graphic inscription become disciplinary modes of representation and what are the implications of this shift? In what ways have institutional practices and settings evolved and transformed in order to adapt to these powerful new ways of seeing?

The conference will include reflections upon the cultural and historical meanings of X-ray technologies, the use of imaging technologies in picturing illness and disease, and the impact of these technologies upon patients' lives. An afternoon session will focus on the historical role of UCSF as a pioneer in body imaging. The conference will conclude with audience discussion and participation.

All events are free and open to the public. The conference is sponsored by the UCSF Department of History of Health Sciences with support from the Culpeper Fund and the UC Humanities Initiative.

Questions? (415) 476-2766

8:50 am	Günter B. Risse UCSF Introduction
9:00 am	Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles Los Angeles, CA "Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the 20th Century, an Update" Medical imaging has transformed the practice of medicine, from pediatrics to dentistry, neurosurgery to geriatrics, gynecology to oncology. The author reviews her recent book on the subject and comments on new aspects and developments.
9:40 am	Molly P. Sutphen University of Florida "Imaging: A Patient's Narrative" Seldom has the patient's point of view regarding imaging procedures been considered in detail. Both a historian and former patient, Dr. Sutphen narrates her encounter with angiograms, CT, and ultrasound.
10:20 am	Break
10:40 am	Terry M. Romano Queen's University, Canada "Fair Representation?: CT, MRI & Ultrasound Imaging" CT, MRI, and ultrasound have allowed us direct access to the interior of the human body, or so we now believe. In the beginning, their original creators worried that the technology might misrepresent the body and thus lead a medical practitioner to make diagnostic errors. Over time, such worries dissipated. The focus of this paper are the scientific, aesthetic, and social components of this transformation based on the pertinent scientific literature, interviews with scientists, and the popular portrayal of imaging.
11:20 am	Barron Lerner Columbia University "Seeing What is Not There: Mammograms and the Radiologic Definition of Disease" The rise of mammography has led to the identification of all sorts of lesions that are not clearly cancer but get biopsied. The resultant pathological diagnoses are often ambiguous. Thus the images and the way physicians interpret them have an enormous impact on the way disease is conceptualized and treated
12:00 pm	Lunch
1:30 pm	Michael J. Ackerman National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD "The Visible Human Project: an Update" This project has created a digital image set of a complete human male and female cadaver in CT, MRI, and anatomical modes. The ultimate objective is to identify all anatomical structures and thus create a common reference point for the study of human anatomy.
2:10 pm	Lisa Cartwright University of Rochester "A Cultural Anatomy of the Visible Human Project" The Visible Human Project has been the subject of tremendous fascination and discussion in the popular press. This paper considers the public reception of the Project, with particular attention to the circulation of information about the individuals on whose bodies the VHP databases are based, and the generation of new and old cultural meanings about the human body in scientific and lay writings about the Project..
2:50 pm	Break
3:15 pm	"UCSF: A Pioneer in Imaging Technologies: A Roundtable Presentation and Discussion on the 'Discovery' of MRI" Nancy Rockafellar, UCSF [Moderator] Lawrence Crooks, UCSF Charles Gooding, UCSF Alexander Margulis, UCSF
4:15 pm	General Discussion
5:00 pm	End of Conference