Recognizing the importance of brain imaging technologies, the Nobel Assembly has awarded the 2003 Nobel in Medicine to American Paul Lauterbur and Britain's Peter Mansfield for their discoveries on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a painless diagnostic method used by doctors to look inside the bodies of millions of patients every year.

Update: 22,000 MRI's are in use worldwide, and more than 60 million scans had been performed.  More.