Michael E. Phelps – PET pioneer – honored by SNMMI
By Staff News Brief
The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) named Michael E. Phelps, Ph.D., the inventor of positron emission tomography (PET) and the first PET scanner, as the recipient of the society’s prestigious Georg Charles de Hevesy Nuclear Pioneer Award at its annual meeting held in Baltimore last week.https://appliedradiology.com/articles/michael-e-phelps-pet-pioneer-honored-by-snmmi
The first PET camera was built for human studies by Edward Hoffman, Michael M. Ter-Pogossian, and Michael E. Phelps in 1973 at Washington University, with DOE and NIH support. Phelps, who is often credited with inventing PET, received the 1998 Enrico Fermi Presidential Award for his work. The first whole-body PET scanner appeared in 1977. Today, there are over 400 PET scanners in use worldwide.