When Pek van Andel of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands was a medical student, one of his professors showed a slide of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Copulation during a lecture.

When he heard a talk years later, in 1991, about magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) pictures of an opera diva singing, it occurred to him that he could use the emerging technology to glimpse what da Vinci could not: an internal view of human intercourse.

In 1992, van Andel and his team began to recruit couples to copulate inside an MRI machine.

Ida Sabelis, the first woman to have participated, described the odd situation: “Confined by the space, we make the best of it”, she wrote.

Not surprisingly, van Andel noted, “we had more than enough volunteers – the problem was the red tape”. By red tape, one presumes he is referring to bureaucracy rather than some other, hitherto unmentioned aspect of the research. Ahem.

Via The Scientist.