About Radiology

The U-M Medical School Department of Radiology has been at the forefront of the field of Radiology since the advent of the field, with the first X-ray exam of a patient with a gunshot wound in the foot in 1896 just a year after the discovery of X-rays, and the establishment of the department in 1917. We take great pride in the highest quality care, our legacy of groundbreaking discovery and the training imparted to the leaders and best that have gone on to worldwide prominence in the field.

Mission

Excellence in subspecialty radiology services, training and discovery

Vision

Create the future of medical imaging

Radiology began at the University of Michigan on April 26,1896, only five months after the announcement of Roentgen's discovery of the X-ray. Mr. S. M. Keenan of Eloise Hospital brought a patient to Ann Arbor with a bullet in his foot. Henry S. Garhart, a professor of physics with a long-standing interest in Crookes tubes produced X-rays in the physics laboratory, and together with William J. Herdman, professor of diseases of the mind and nervous system and of electrotherapeutics, they made an image of the patient's foot showing the bullet. Herdman soon began using a static machine in his office to demonstrate the production of X-rays and their medical value to his students. In 1899, W. A. Spitzley's publication on “X-rays and the Development of their Usefulness," just three years after Roentgen read his preliminary report before the Physico-Medical Society of Würzburg, was published in the Michigan Alumnus and illustrated several of the first "skiagraphs obtained at the University of Michigan.

In 1913, James Van Zwaluwenburg, M.D., became the first professor of roentgenology in the nation here at the University of Michigan, and in 1917, the University of Michigan became the first medical school to form an independent Department of Radiology.  Formal training in radiology was started, and the field began its evolution into radiological science. 

As we look back at our past at the many scientific discoveries and imaging "firsts" here at the University of Michigan, we can only marvel at what the next 100 years will bring!