[PET in Aarhus: the origins of a laboratory].

Recent medical history is a new trend among medical historians. The new focus on late developments of note to health care providers has inspired me to relate certain personal events related to the establishment of a laboratory of positron emission tomography in a remote city of a small country far away. The record may be appropriate because the laboratory celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2003. The laboratory is the home of an advanced technology with special needs in terms of space, installations and staff. The technology rests on a combination of random discoveries and goal-directed inventions that include the discovery of positrons, the invention of the cyclotron, the development of computerized analysis of huge data sets, insight into the biochemistry of organs and the quest for understanding of the pathology of specific diseases. U.S. researchers played unique roles in the three former areas, while Danish researchers made important contributions to the latter two areas.