Inside art

Instead of using paint and brushes to depict life Franz Fellner, an Austrian radiologist at the general hospital in Linz, has used modern investigative radiological tools to create unique images of the human form and of inanimate objects. His exhibition, Ars Intrinsica, shows the inside of the human body in detail. These depictions of the internal organs, the brain, and the body’s vast network of arteries and veins are reminiscent of images from Andreas Vesalius’s great anatomical opus of 1543, De Humanis Corporis Fabrica.

Fellner has used the latest techniques in digital imaging, such as multislice computed tomography and diffusion and tensor weighted magnetic resonance imaging. Modern scanners allow fast, three dimensional visualisation of the internal organs in different planes. The past two decades have seen vast improvements in computing technology, leading to the development of faster and more powerful scanners that enable ever more detailed visualisation.

The images have all been manipulated with computer software. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, which shows activity in different parts of the brain while different tasks are performed, such as listening to music or doing mathematics, has been turned into works of art. Fellner has also created unusual and revealing computed tomography images of musical instruments, including mandolins.

The use of radiographic techniques to create art is almost as old as radiology itself. John Hall-Edwards, the distinguished Birmingham radiologist, published a paper in 1913 entitled “The radiography of flowers” and used x rays to create artistic images of flowers (Arch Röntgen Ray 1914;19:30-1). Film directors have dabbled with radiographic imaging—for example, Roger Corman in his science fiction cult classic film from 1963, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. The film, whose protagonist could see through objects, is notable for its early depiction of radiographic images of bodies and buildings and may have inspired subsequent generations of creators of radiographic art.

In the past decade or so the application of x ray techniques to create works of art has become more widespread, with Nick Veasey’s recent radiographic images of objects coming to mind in particular. Veasey, a photographer, used simple x rays to see through the surface of everyday objects, such as cups and saucers, shoes, and computers, to reveal their inner beauty. This technique pushed the boundaries of photographic art. Leaves and flowers, insects, and fish were displayed as never before.

The district of Lennep in Remscheid in Germany, a city about 20 km east of Düsseldorf, was the birthplace of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. It is the home to a museum devoted to the great scientist, whose discovery of x rays in 1895 changed the way medicine was to be practised for ever. Ars Intrinsica (“art from the interior”) is a temporary exhibition that was first shown in Linz, then at the Leopold Museum in Vienna in 2009, and will be at the Deutsches Röntgen Museum until April 2011.

The museum was founded in 1932 in the house where Röntgen was born. Filled with objects from Röntgen’s life and work, including early x ray apparatus, it describes the developments in radiology that occurred throughout the 20th century. The total collection comprises 65 000 items, with a quarter on display. These range from diagnostic and therapeutic equipment to examples of the use of radiographic techniques in applied spheres: analysis of materials, investigation of Egyptian mummies, and even modern security scanning of baggage. Included is Röntgen’s original Nobel prize medal from 1901, the first Nobel prize in physics. Photographs of Röntgen on holiday in Switzerland with his wife reveal the human side of the genius.

It is fitting that Ars Intrinsica is on display at the birthplace of one of the great scientific pioneers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A visit would be a pilgrimage for those whose clinical practice has been altered by Röntgen’s discoveries—that is, almost every doctor—but also gives us the opportunity to see a thought provoking exhibition of art.