Siemens, a firm which builds really nifty diagnostic imaging equipment, has a new CT scanner out.
A scanner that can peer inside a living body to reveal muscles, organs and arteries in unprecedented detail has been unveiled.
It uses the fact that different tissues absorb (and deflect and scatter) x-rays differently to separate them out in a computer. However, the fact that some parts of the body move, no matter what, is a problem.
But there are limits to how fast a single X-ray beam can be rotated - three revolutions per second is the fastest on offer but that is still too long for a detailed heart scan. So Siemens instead built two scanners in one, allowing the device to image twice as much of the body in the same amount of time. The dual CT system takes just a twelfth of a second to image the body, faster than a single heartbeat, and yet still allows clear pictures down to 0.4mm.
Note to self: check up on the status of the Imatron system. This system uses a scanning electron beam and a tungsten ring to create a fast-moving x-ray source. It's able to zip around the body, because there's no physical x-ray tube to move. Back in the late 80s, resolution in this system was limited by how much the electron beam moved during an exposure. The size of the focal spot was swamped in this other source of error.
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