Niels A. Lassen

Who was Niels A. Lassen?

Niels Alexander Lassen was a Danish medical doctor and pioneer of neuroimaging. He was born and died in Copenhagen.

His father, H.C.A. Lassen, was professor at the University of Copenhagen, and Niels Lassen graduated as medical doctor from the same university in 1951. With his colleague Ole Munck he began in the 1950s to use radioactive isotopes for the measurement of the blood circulation in the brain, and in the beginning of the 1960s he together with David H. Ingvar from University of Lund began the development of methods for regional measurements on the brain with krypton-85 and xenon-133 isotopes. These efforts were summarized in a Scientific American article in 1978. Lassen has been called the greatest Danish brain researcher since Niels Steensen.

He was employed at the Bispebjerg Hospital from 1962 to 1996 and wrote more than 600 articles. He was married to Edda Sveinsdottir who as a computer scientist helped with the development of the advanced computer technology for image construction of the regional brain measurements.