Damadian's research into sodium and potassium in living cells led him to his first experiments with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) which caused him to first propose the NMR-relaxation body scanner in 1969. Damadian observed that tumors and normal tissue can be distinguished in vivo by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) because of their prolonged relaxation times, both T1 (spin-lattice relaxation) or T2 (spin-spin relaxation). Damadian was the first to perform a full body scan of a human being in 1977 to diagnose cancer. Damadian was among many individuals and research groups working to develop NMR-based methods to generate images of the human body, a method now known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).