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.

"cutting the exposure to x-rays by 80%"

[Lost Penguin (636359)]

They now use Gamma rays......

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[Goalie_Ca (584234)]

Actually, that would be a PET scan.

I can scan a body in 3 seconds...

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

... well the important bits ... if it is female.

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[Jason Levine (196982)]

Side effects include: Green skin, bad fashion taste (some test subjects began wearing purple shorts), out of control anger/rage, and the urge to smash whatever is nearby.

bad idea

[Erris (531066)]

now use Gamma rays......

Those make poor imaging information carriers. They scatter too much instead of undergoing photo-electric absorption. They can be used but ~100 kVp xrays or ~20 keV photons work better.

This scan would make "House" episodes...

[ciaohound (118419)]

a lot shorter. Well, I guess the writers can come up with some other convention whereby four or more elite and highly-paid doctors can discuss a single patient ad nauseum.

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[CRCulver (715279)]

Have you also noticed how central New Jersey seems to get an unproportionally high amount of freak medical conditions and epidemics?

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[pwnies (1034518)]

...but never patients with lupus.

You missed it.

[jellomizer (103300)]

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.

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[Rude Turnip (49495)]

Realistically, it should be North Jersey, where all the oil refineries and chemical waste reside.

Re:This scan would make "House" episodes...

[Ngarrang (1023425)]

Have you also noticed how central New Jersey seems to get an unproportionally high amount of freak medical conditions and epidemics?

Is death by cement boots a medical condition or epidemic?

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[nine-times (778537)]

Yeah, because I'm sure the writers of House make accuracy and realism their highest priorities.

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[VE3MTM (635378)]

They used to, in the first two seasons. Since then they've slipped, however, and focus more on the soap opera. This site [politedissent.com] has in-depth reviews of House episodes by a (real, actual) physician. Look at an early episode, then look at a Season 4 episode.

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[Gulthek (12570)]

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.

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[necro81 (917438)]

By and large, the medicine portrayed in House is accurate, even if it is rare and farfetched.

What requires more suspended disbelief than the medicine are these facets of the show:

1) All these interns run their own labs (by hand, no less), do their own surgeries and biopsies, and run CT, MRI and ultrasound scanners all by themselves

2) A narcotic-addicted doctor that displays such insubordination, so thoroughly and arbitrarily abuses his subordinates, and is so blase about sexual harassment, would be

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[PCM2 (4486)]

By and large, the medicine portrayed in House is accurate, even if it is rare and farfetched.

I dunno...odd goofs are not uncommon, and they're often the type of basic stuff that you'd think even a cursory review by a medical adviser would pick up. I seem to remember one episode where they repeatedly referred to toxoplasmosis as a fungal infection, for example (it's not, it's a blood parasite -- kind of a big difference). And that was in the first two seasons (agreed with another poster that 3 & 4 hav

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[pragma_x (644215)]

Well, they could always have a few more episodes where the patient has Lupus.

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[smooth wombat (796938)]

If you want to learn something, look elsewhere.

To quote Independence Day:

That's not entirely correct.

While yes, the show is really about the rantings of socially disfunctional, yet somehow brilliant, doctor, each diagnosis has a bit of truth behind it.

Take one of the most recent shows where House gets taken away by the CIA to diagnose an agent who is afflicted with a mysterious condition. In the end, the reason for the illness came down to radiation poisoning caused by eating too many braz

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[TheRaven64 (641858)]

In the end, it turns out she had been poisoning him with gold

I've not watched House, but this sounds like nonsense. Gold is non-toxic. It is commonly used to decorate expensive desserts and has no ill effects when ingested. A couple of years ago someone brought a bottle of sparking wine to my New Year party which contained gold leaf which the bubbles picked up made dance in your glass. Gold is approved as a food additive in the EU as E175, so if you see E175 on the ingredients list you know it contains gold (although since it's only used for decoration you can p

256 slices?

[$RANDOMLUSER (804576)]

Here kid, here's a quarter, get a real processor.

Other applications

[pwnies (1034518)]

It would be interesting to see if this gets ported over to the entertainment industry as well. If it can do everything it claims to be able to do it would greatly help with modeling movies like "Pirates of the Caribbean" where bone structures of the actors are important.

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[wattrlz (1162603)]

Something tells me that's not the first thing the, "Entertainment Industry" was thinking when they heard the words, "full body scan".

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[samkass (174571)]

My guess is that in 10 years every dentist and orthodontist office will have a full-head CT scanner like device.

Airport security

[CaligarisDesk (1189113)]

When they figure out how to make these cheap, you can bet they'll be placing them in airports. Nothing like a full body scan to check if someone swallowed a heroin capsule or is hiding bomb making materials.

Already done.

[Animaether (411575)]

http://www.google.nl/search?q=body+scan+schiphol [google.nl]

Slashdot has covered these before as well, with the usual privacy concerns (omg they can see my schlong size! What if somebody posts pictures of hot young women from these scan on the interwebs? *starts bodyscan pr0n site*)

Re:Already done.

[mdielmann (514750)]

If I wasn't at work right now, I'd so be googling "bodyscan porn" right now so I could be...googling bodyscan porn. Well, that takes care of my plans for the night.

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[RareButSeriousSideEf (968810)]

You can see such things on X-Rays as well depending on the exposure & whatnot. Normally you might think that would be no big deal in a medical context, but once I was at a chiropractor when he had an X-Ray of me up on the lightbox, and you could see exactly the feature you mention. Then his girlfriend / receptionist knocked on the door, he said "come in," and I felt more than a little bit awkward. [This space reserved for others' endowment jokes.]

This was long before HIPAA, of course. I imagine that suc

X-Ray or MRI?

[MBCook (132727)]

So is this a replacement for an X-Ray machine, or for an MRI machine? It seems to give MRI like results, but the article mentions that it uses X-Rays to do it's job (where MRI's use magnets).

Is this a fancy X-Ray machine, an X-Ray machine hoping to take on some of the duties of an MRI, or an X-Ray machine that should completely replace MRIs?

I know there are some things one can find that the other can't (ignoring the obvious importance of you can't look at shrapnel in an MRI because it would be pulled out

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[timster (32400)]

Well, it's a beefed up CAT scan, and those have always been X-ray based.

Re:X-Ray or MRI?

[Goalie_Ca (584234)]

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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[Poromenos1 (830658)]

Aw man, so I need to get both?!?! There goes my christmas budget :(

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[mdielmann (514750)]

...you can't look at shrapnel in an MRI because it would be pulled out by the magnets...

Sounds like an MRI would be the perfect tool for looking at shrapnel. Just sucks for the patient.

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[smooth wombat (796938)]

Just sucks for the patient.

Which is exactly what happened to a patient on a recent episode of House (see further up the page for the original discussion of House and reality).

Magician attempts Houdini water trick. Magician starts spewing blood while suspended upside down in water tank. Houses' minions go to do MRI to see inside. Magician starts screaming. Minions notice large bruise-like area in lower abdomen. House walks in on magician undergoing surgery to determine source of bleeding and pu

Re:X-Ray or MRI?

[RockyMountain (12635)]

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).

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[ceoyoyo (59147)]

It looks to me like the Beeb fell for a Phillips press release.

It SOUNDS like what they're describing is a helical CT scanner, which are cool, but have been around for a while. The only real difference I could find in the article is that this one is about 22% faster than the others - an incremental improvement on existing technology.

All the rest seemed to be misleading -- comparing x-ray exposure and speed to "the first CT scanners" for instance. Well duh, if your scanner isn't better than the first ones

Re:X-Ray or MRI?

[Xenotionar (226921)]

It's not a replacement for a CT scanner, it *IS* a CT scanner. The synopsis, as well as the article itself, is very vague and misleading. This isn't some brand new technology, it's technology that is and has been continually advancing since the 70's. I work with a 16 slice scanner in a hospital and it can do all of the 3d reconstructions like in this article, just takes longer to acquire the data from the patient.

I expect we'll see a lot of new scan techs...

[Kazoo the Clown (644526)]

I expect we'll see a lot of these new 3D scanning technologies in the next few years. Right now, the MRI and CT are the most common, and both are rather crude. MRI zaps a huge magnetic field yet still may require the ingestion of Gadolinium in order to produce enough contrast to see blood vessels, and Gadolinium has been linked to some unpleasant new diseases. X-rays are not without their risks either so I hope some better ultrasound or something comes along. I would think that before long a detailed 3D

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[140Mandak262Jamuna (970587)]

Now that chemistry sets have been gutted for safety we need something to give kids that's a little more interesting...

Nah. I am waiting for "Make Your Own Ebola Virus" kit. Hours of endless fun. I see them being advertised right next to those sea monkeys.

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[Sponge Bath (413667)]

Children don't need a virus kit.
They are already nasty little disease vectors that should only be handled with latex gloves and sterile tongs.

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[fireboy1919 (257783)]

Hours* of endless fun.

*Approximately ten of them. Then the pain starts to set in, and the systemic organ failure...

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[ChrisMaple (607946)]

Each technology has its own advantages and disadvantages. Inherent in ultrasound is a tradeoff between resolution and penetration. Higher frequencies have a shorter wavelength and hence better resolution, but higher frequencies are absorbed in shorter distances. Thus "deep" and "in detail" are mutually exclusive. High power ultrasound is not a solution to the tradeoff, because high power causes cavitation (bubbles), heating, and (I guess) tissue disruption. Being an acoustic technique, ultrasound is also su

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[backwardMechanic (959818)]

MRI zaps a huge magnetic field yet still may require the ingestion of Gadolinium

Huge magnetic field, check. Gadolinium - not necessarily, you can see a lot without it. Those fancy brain images you keep seeing on TV don't require a contrast agent. As for crude - in 20 years time our current machine will probably look a bit rough around the edges, but neither CT or MR is too simple.

Friggin Great

[Critical Facilities (850111)]

The record company EMI was behind the first commercially viable CT scanner, which was invented by Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield in Hayes, United Kingdom at the company's laboratories and unveiled in 1972.

Fabulous, now I have to pay the RIAA royalty fees on my CT Scans too? I'm not sure if my PPO is gonna cover that.

Oblig. Car Analogy

[dontthink (1106407)]

The article makes this out to be a huge breakthrough in medical imaging, but (to use the obligatory car analogy) it's basically like announcing the 2008 Toyota Camry is a super-car; sure, it's better than the last year's model, but the improvements are incremental and other manufacturers have similar products available. More detectors, spins faster, upgrades in reconstruction software, etc are the only differences from their existing models, and other companies showed similar tech at RSNA. Don't get me wr

except you're totally wrong

[Quadraginta (902985)]

TFA doesn't mention it, but if you were older you'd probably realize this is a big deal. Maybe not this particular machine, but the general approach.

What this replaces is not an MRI or a CAT scan, but an angiogram. That's the nasty procedure where they inject dye into your coronary arteries through a catheter threaded up through your femoral artery while they image your heart, so they can see whether you have CAD (coronary artery disease, where the arteries supplying the heart are narrowed or blocked, the

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[joey_knisch (804995)]

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

Re:except you're totally wrong

[dontthink (1106407)]

For people in the business, I'm sure this particular machine is not news, because they are aware of the general trend and this doesn't indicate a big bump or sudden change in the trend.

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 [businesswire.com]).

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.

But my impression of the original comment was that it was made by someone who wasn't even aware of the importance of the general trend of multislice CT machines towards faster, better, and lower-radiation imaging, and thought vaguely that the whole trend was merely towards a more expensive and flashier way to diagnose knee problems in NFL running backs.

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.

Spooky

[squidinkcalligraphy (558677)]

I just got this in my inbox yesterday:

(blatantly ripped from http://futurefeedforward.com/front.php?fid=104 [futurefeedforward.com] )

Google Body: Users Find Asses with Both Hands
August 18, 2022

MOUNTAIN VIEW--Information search giant Google, Inc. announced Thursday the release of Google Body, a search service aiming to index the internal and external anatomy of every living creature on the planet. "Google has long been dedicated to making information both useful and universally accessible," notes Google VP of Product Development Er

Oh hell man...

[way2trivial (601132)]

Prevention oriented- so far as spotting conditions or so far as refusing new insurees?

not to be all 1984 or gattagaesque- but imagine if they built one in at human resources...
quick scan-- nope- no insurance for your (mysterious lump filled) ass...

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[Cappy Red (576737)]

Even if it is obligatory, you shouldn't make it that transparent. I could see right through that.

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This is my post. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things.
Karma: 20% bad pun, 80% trying too hard.