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New Super Scanner Can Scan Body in Under a Minute
Smivs writes to mention that a new 3D scanner, unveiled at the Radiological Society of North America, has been in use for the last month at the Metro Health medical center in Cleveland, Ohio. This new scanner allows for much more detailed scans of the entire body in just under one minute also cutting the exposure to x-rays by as much as 80%. The cost of the new tech has not yet been released.
A CT scan (cat scan) is basically an X-ray machine that can yield 3D images just like an MRI. But CT is better at imaging bone and doing angiography. MRI's excel at soft tissue and make "movies" of things like a beating heart. MRI's are basically programmable and can do all kinds of things as a result.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Last Week the patient had lupus. All the symptoms were throwing them off because they gave them an infusion of the wrong blood type because the lupus made a different protein in the blood that made it look like an other type.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
... well the important bits ... if it is female.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's a CT scanner.
In other words, the technology is X-ray, but it electronically combines many images from many angles to build up a 3D image of what's inside the patient.
By the way, CT scans and MRIs are somewhat complementary to each other. Which one is "better" depends on what you are looking for:
CT uses X-rays, which I beleive (to my limited understanding) essentially measure density. Denser matter stops more X-rays, less dense matter lets more through.
MRI on the other hand uses magnetic resonance, which senses water concentration by alligning the magnetic dipole moments of water neuclei, and then "pinging" them and watching them resonate. Water concentration in the wrong place can indicate ruptured cell walls found in tumors, for example. Depending on exactly what you're hoping to spot, one may be better technology than the other.
(Disclaimer, I am not a doctor. Just someone with too many friends and relatives with cancer, unfortunately).
I picked three random episodes from the first and fourth seasons. Both seasons had a mixture of D's to B's in the 'medicine' category. The 'soap opera' category is consistently high (even noted in the first episode review). It seems that the show has always known its true focus is on the character dynamic, not the medicine.
If you were involved in radiology or cardio imaging you'd probably realize this is already being done. At the hospital I work at we have a 64 slice CT that does angiography. Does it mean we replaced all angio with the CTA (Computed Tomography Angiography)? No. There are advantages to both.
Additionally, please check your sources when you say that no dye is involved in CTA. Perhaps you were thinking of MRA (Magnetic Resonance Angiography) which can be done with or without.
In any case, these new tools will advance medicine but the car analogy holds. This is the 2008 model. It's newly redesigned and comes standard with XM satellite radio. Enjoy.
I'm a medical physicist, so I do know my share about CT (and other medical imaging) - I guess you could say I'm "in the business." And yes, the trend of adding more slices has been going on for years, and yes, it is good, but in my opinion more slices does not make this a "super-scanner" that is going to change medicine as we know it as TFA and summary imply.
To beat the dead horse of the car analogy, it's like this year's model gets a few more mpg than last year's (and maybe a TV in the seat, just for the "cool" factor of having a 256 slice CT)... A practical improvement that is good for everybody concerned, but not revolutionary.
Also, in another post you mention new car models as marketing hype - medical devices are a BIG business, and have a huge marketing machine. RSNA (mentioned in the article and summary) is the biggest trade show for medical devices in the country (possibly the world) - there are huge booths, displays, free swag, etc, and glitz definitely comes into play there. I wasn't at RSNA this year (last time was 2005), but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Philips had a display model of this unit on a rotating platform, a la a car show. The article sound eerily similar to the Philips press release (found here:http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/index.jsp?epi_menuItemID=887566059a3aedb6efaaa9e27a808a0c&ndmViewId=news_view&ndmConfigId=1000052&newsId=20071125005033&newsLang=en).
I'm fully aware of the importance of developing better CT imaging, but this isn't really a huge improvement over existing 64-slice CT scanners. As another poster pointed out, CT angiography has been around awhile and Toshiba already has a production 256-slice unit. The dose given is incrementally lower, which is a good thing, but not nearly enough to make CT screening for cardiac disease commonplace. When it comes to CT, novel sampling and reconstruction algorithms are as important on the dose reduction front IMO.
Heh, ouch... don't know where you got that from my post (I said in my OP "Don't get me wrong - the advances are useful and worthwhile, but just not the revolution TFA and summary make it out to be.")
A cheap, low/no-dose, fast, and effective means to screen for cardiac disease would be a public-health breakthrough - this machine ain't it (which you have said yourself).
By the way, I stand behind everything in my OP, and fail to see how I am "totally wrong" as the subject of your reply suggests.
PET or Positron Emmission Tomography is a functional metabolic scan. Their is no "dangerous chemical" in a PET scan, it is a Nuclear tracer usually FDG18 (Fluro Dexi Glucose) aka (Sugar Solution with a RadioTracer created in a cyclotron) or Rubidium as the new boutique radiopharms. The tracer is injected through an IV into the patient 45 minutes to an hour before the patient goes through the scanner. The radiation that a patient is exposed to is far less than a CT scan because the PET mahine is really more a "scanner" than anything, it has detector pots that collect the various counts of radiation from the patient. High end workstations allow the data to be processed and reconstructed to create 3d models of the human body. PET is Hot or Not, the healthy cells burn the FDG like glucose as fuel, the cancerous cells absorb the tracer through the cellular membrane but since they are dead cells they don't metabolize the sugar as they should and thus the cancerous cells "glow". This may not seem like much, but when fused (overlayed with transparency) with an anatomical scan such as CT or MR (got to give those Radiologists some anatomy) it becomes a very efficient tool for initial diagnosis, staging, and restaging of cancer treatment.
:)
CT or Computed Tomography is a anatomical scan, take a bunch of detectors and mount them in a spherical order and add an xray tube. voila you have a CT. Ooooh 256 Slices, actually the number of slices just means faster scan times and a more detailed image, which doesn't mean much until you get into Angiography aka CTA, which is precisely the target market for this device, no more invasive caths, just a simple scan, and don't worry about the radiation, its just like standing in front of the microwave...for 47 years
-IT guy for a Mobile PET/CT company