The Nuclear Stethoscope in China

I N 1979, with a group of cardiologists, I was invited to China, met Dr. Xiu-jie Liu at the Fuwai Hospital of Beijing, and left with him a device that we had invented that was called a “nuclear stethoscope.” It was a simple radiation detector that could track the filling and emptying of the ventricles of the heart after the injection of radioactive tracers, such as albumin or red blood ceils. Dr. Liu used this device subsequently in carrying out over 20 research studies in China. He came to study nuclear medicine at Johns Hopkins University a few years later, and has been a close friend ever since.