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Technicare


Technicare, formerly known as Ohio Nuclear, made CT, DR and MRI scanners and other medical imaging equipment. Its headquarters was in Solon, Ohio. Originally an independent company, it was later purchased by Johnson & Johnson. At the time, Invacare was also owned by Technicare. The company did not do well under Johnson & Johnson and in 1986, under economic pressure following unrelated losses from two Tylenol product tampering cases, J&J folded the company, selling the intellectual property and profitable service business to General Electric, a competitor.

Ohio Nuclear's (ON) first products were nuclear medicine (NM) scanners. They made a rectilinear gamma scanner and a gamma camera in the 70s. This was followed by a variety of NM products. The company had bought also an ultrasound product line (formerly UNIRAD).

The following information is copied from a Technicare advertising brochure, which primarily focuses on Nuclear Medicine products. This is a personal possession and it is not known if any more of these documents survive.

1963 - Developed first whole body rectilinear scanner. 1964 - Introduced first dual head rectilinear scanner 1967 - developed scan minification principle 1968 - first to offer 750 cm/min scanning speed. 1972 - Introduced 37 tube scintillation camera 1974 - introduced large field scintillation camera to US market. 1975 - Introduced 37 tube large field mobile camera. Introduced DeltaScan, a high resolution (256 x 256) matrix whole body computed tomography scanner.

Of some additional interest is the <October, 1975, Scientific American></October, 1975, Scientific American>. On page 4 of this issue, the following statement is made (quoted verbatim from the issue).

"The Cover. The picture on the cover is a section through the chest of a living human subject made by the technique of reconstruction from projections (see "Image Reconstruction from Projections," page 56). In that technique a series of X-ray exposures made from different angles around the body are combined by computer to present a cross-sectional picture on the screen of a cathode-ray tube. In the picture on the cover the chest is seen as though it were viewed from above the patient's head. The dark spaces to the left and right are the lungs. The large red area in the middle is the heart. The white areas are bone; below the center is the spinal column, and around the lungs are sections through the ribs. In general the tomato red areas are muscular tissue and the lavender areas are fatty tissue. The branched areas in the lungs are blood vessels and bronchi. The picture was made (by the Delta Scanner built by Ohio-Nuclear, Inc.) in the course of a study that was conducted by Ralph J. Alfidi, M.D. of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation."


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