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Science Technology

New Super Scanner Can Scan Body in Under a Minute 129

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
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.
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New Super Scanner Can Scan Body in Under a Minute More

New Super Scanner Can Scan Body in Under a Minute

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  • "cutting the exposure to x-rays by 80%" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lost Penguin ( 636359 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @04:13PM (#21483263)
    They now use Gamma rays......

  • This scan would make "House" episodes... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ciaohound ( 118419 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @04:15PM (#21483295)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yeah, because I'm sure the writers of House make accuracy and realism their highest priorities.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 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.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by 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.
        • It could be worse.

          It could be Grey's Anatomy. *shudder*

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by 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

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 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

        • 1) They're not interns, they're fellows. Big difference. In fact, they are already specialists - Foreman is a neurologist, Cameron is an immunologist. Note that Foreman has basically been offered House's job multiple times.

          2) Yeah, I'm not sure which is more unbelievable: that, or the idea that Cuddy would still be in charge after letting him run loose like that.

        • People would say that about IT Workers too, but it is what happends.

        • 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

          None of them are 'interns' in the straight-outta med-school sense. They're already full-fledged doctors. They're doing basically post-graduate studies. They're all accomplished doctors already, they're just taking another level of specialization, but they're already specialists (neurologists, immunologists).

          2) A narcotic-addicted doctor that displays su

    • Well, they could always have a few more episodes where the patient has Lupus.
    • Oh, whatever. You know no one on House can go into a scanner and not nearly die. Play that part up and you've got plenty of time.

  • 256 slices? (Score:3, Funny)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @04:17PM (#21483321)
    Here kid, here's a quarter, get a real processor.

  • Other applications (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pwnies ( 1034518 ) * <j@jjcm.org> on Monday November 26, 2007 @04:21PM (#21483365) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Airport security (Score:3, Funny)

    by CaligarisDesk ( 1189113 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @04:31PM (#21483491)
    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.
    • 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*)
      • While the net effect is simillar the two systems are very different. This scan you link to uses high-frequency microwaves to see through clothing in realtime. The 256 slice CT scan uses X-rays to make a 3d model of your insides in abotu a minute. The schipol system can see things like if you've got a bomb strapped to your chest or are trying to smuggle a snake under your jacket. The CT scanner can see things like your stomach contents or if you've got a microchip implanted in your arm.

      • Re:Already done. (Score:5, Funny)

        by mdielmann ( 514750 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @04:45PM (#21483661) Homepage Journal
        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.
      • 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

    • If that happens, I wonder how long it's going to be before they design a detonator that activates when hit with x-rays. If you can't blow up the plane, at least blow up the security guys.
  • we could Super-scan body for smuggled nukes in no time !

  • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by timster ( 32400 )
      Well, it's a beefed up CAT scan, and those have always been X-ray based.

    • Re:X-Ray or MRI? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @04:40PM (#21483601)
      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.
      • Aw man, so I need to get both?!?! There goes my christmas budget :(
      • A CT Scanner can also be used to acquired "movies", its called 4D-CT (fourth dimension being the time dimension). With a 256 slice scaner such as the one presented in TFA, this can be done fast enough to get great images of the hearth at work

    • ...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.
      • 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? (Score:5, Informative)

      by RockyMountain ( 12635 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @05:43PM (#21484449) Homepage
      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).

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 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

        • The future is spectroscopic X-ray imaging. (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          You are absolutely right. This is a standard multislice CT scanner. The fact that it is 256 slices, not the 64/128 that are the current state of the art, is small news. Philips have produced an incremental improvement. I think Toshiba even have a 256 near ready for clinical use. Its amazing the BBC fell for this. Its like announcing on the BBC that 8G flash-memory usb-drive will be the standard in 2 years time.

          From my post elsewhere in this article...

          The next big leap in X-ray imaging is likely to be

      • Actually I read about newer X-ray machines a few months ago. The point was that matter changed the PHASE of the X-rays - this allowed for much more precision than traditional X-Ray machines.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Imabug ( 2259 )
        For the past few years, Philips has been lagging behind the technology curve when it comes to CT scanners. They're hardly the first to come out with a 256 slice scanner. FTA, the only new thing I see that Philips has brought is the faster rotation time (4 rotations/sec compared to 3 rotations/sec current scanners are capable of).
    • What do you mean by "MRI like results"? If you mean the 3D reconstruction, it can be done by pretty much any CT scanner given enough time for scanning. The main point of the article is that if we increase the number of slices concurrently imaged on a CT, the scan time gets reduced and extent of the scan (field-of-view) is increased. This is a big advantage for imaging arteries of the beating heart (coronary arteries). This is where MRI sucks mainly due to motion and the scan-time.
  • Toshiba launched the same gadget - http://www.pr-inside.com/toshiba-launches-breakthrough-ct-system-r317005.htm [pr-inside.com]

    The most distuingishing feature of both is that they can do 256 slices, older tech could only do 64.

    CC.
  • 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
    • 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.

      • 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.

      • Hours* of endless fun.

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

      • 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 s

    • 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.

      • Gadolinium - not necessarily, you can see a lot without it.

        Theoretically, perhaps. Problem is, this is only true if you have the latest gear, and the gear is so damn expensive that many MRI labs are using older stuff-- just try telling your local lab that you don't want them to use Gado and see how far you get...

        • I'm sat in my local lab right now. As far as I know we haven't yet used Gad on a single human (it is used in some animal studies here). We rarely used gad in my previous lab too. One of the biggest uses of MRI these days is functional studies (fMRI), where the contrast is given by changes in blood oxygenation - gad wouldn't help there at all. It's hard to call a study non-invasive when you have to inject something like gad - which is why a lot of us are working on getting the most SNR out of the MR machine,

  • 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.
  • You know what /. needs? Cross-article commenting. The article just prior to this one was about a new scanner to detect nukes. This article is about a body scanner. Combine the two, and viola! You've got a detector that can tell if someone is carrying a suitcase nuke and if they have any health issues, too! That's what cross-article commenting is all about. It's kind of like cross-site scripting, only much different.

    Seriously though, I think this is an excellent advance, since some people really have claustr

  • 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
    • 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

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by 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
        • You're right about the contrast material, so thanks for the correction.

          Yes, it's already being done, but unfortunately as another commenter notes, and I said, it now involves a lot of radiation, so the ability to get it done at much lower doses is significant news.

          Balls to the stupid car analogy. You might as well say the Pentium was merely adding chrome and tailfins to the 486.
      • These newfangled detectors promise to be able to image the heart in such exquisite 3D detail that your cardiologist can basically just look at your heart and see whether you have CAD, and how far along it is. And all you need to do is lie on the X-ray table for a few minutes.

        With this device, it sounds like you only need to lay down for a few seconds. I believe the phrase was "a couple of heartbeats."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
        This isn't a newfangled detector. It's a helical CT scanner, tech that is a decade old. It does replace a CT scanner. Precisely.

        You can do a CT angiogram with this scanner or last year's model (as the grandparent points out, this is just an incremental upgrade) but it has some disadvantages compared to a regular x-ray angiogram. First the CT angio usually uses MORE contrast agent, not less and certainly not none, because the agent is diluted through your entire blood stream. Secondly, you lose the dyna
        • Er...I don't recall saying anything about a new detector. The fact that it's not wholly new technology is irrelevant to the question of whether this machine -- or rather, as I actually said, this general area of development -- is a significant overall technological advance. Shrinking your minimum feature size on a chip from 150 to 60 nm may not involve brand-new tech, but it's still a major technological advance, and enables lots of stuff you couldn't do before.

          You're right about the use of contrast, I ma

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
            Okay, to put this in computer terms, the new scanner is supposed to be about 20% faster than older ones. So that's approximately the difference between a 2 GHz processor and the 2.4 GHz version. It doesn't really let you do anything you couldn't before, except maybe impress your friends (assuming you have a stopwatch handy to actually measure the difference). As the post you claimed was wrong put it, it's this year's model, nothing more.

            The article claims it reduces radiation by as much as 80%... compare
            • It's unlikely the radiation dose ever will be reduced enough because of limitations dictated by the laws of physics.

              I call bullshit. What's your argument for this wild statement?

              The new model year of a car seems a pretty good analogy.

              That's your opinion, fair enough. I think you're wrong. A new model year rarely involves any advance in technology, efficiency, et cetera. Not even the equivalent of bumping up the processor speed by 20%. It's just marketing flash, as anyone whose bought a few cars in their

              • Re:except you're totally wrong (Score:4, Informative)

                by dontthink ( 1106407 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:42PM (#21486911)

                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.
        • Third, resolution is poorer so you can miss small vessels and especially small occlusions.

          True, but most cath labs still have single plane flouroscopes, so depending on how symmetric (or not) a stenosis is, you may not even see it. Besides if you have an occlusion, it's going to be pretty hard to miss as no contrast is going to go through.

          Fourth, CT angio has a higher x-ray dose than x-ray angio. Significantly higher. As in, you hesitate to do it on young people.

          You'd be more likely to do a CTA on a

  • I wonder when the cost of these scanners comes down enough that prevention-oriented HMO's can do routine scans of their patients. Their doctors do quick, cursory reviews of the most common, serious medical conditions. For example, this aneurysm sounds very serious, but easy enough to spot: http://www.or-live.com/gore/1904/ [or-live.com]
    • 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...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by caywen ( 942955 )
        I was referring to routine scans for existing subscribers. I'm pretty sure Kaiser wouldn't get many new customers if they had to undergo a scan *before* enrolling.
  • 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
  • Toshiba has been running 320 slice CT scans for some time now. See here [newswise.com] and here [theglobeandmail.com]. The 256-slice version of the scanner has been running for atleast 6 months now. See here [hopkinsmedicine.org]

  • Oblig. (Score:1)

    by Ryn ( 9728 )
    The F-ray!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Cappy Red ( 576737 )
      Even if it is obligatory, you shouldn't make it that transparent. I could see right through that.

      ---
      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.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I heard about this technology being used in an American emergency room TWO YEARS AGO. Maybe not exactly this. Maybe it was ten minutes instead of one minute. But still, why aren't machines like this in more widespread use yet?
  • then why is it on slashdot?
  • When people were raving about full body scans, they'd look at the tiniest little blot on the image and go paranoid thinking its cancer. As Dr. House says, "it can find a problem in anybody."

    Still, I wonder if this thing can export the images into a common 3d app file for use in Maya, Softimage, or 3dsMax?
    • CT images are commonly stored in DICOM [nema.org] [medical.nema.org] format. They are not stored as 3D mesh objects (like 3D apps do), but rather in CT slice packs. It's up to the software using the images (such as a treatment planning system) to construct a 3D image such as seen in the BBC article. The scanner itself is dumb with regards to human analogy. It just scans the density of the mater between the scanning elements and reconstructs a series of 2D images. Creating a 3D image from the stack is pretty straightfo
  • 80% of a massively insane amount of radiation is still too much.

    Cool yes, but it's still down a bad path.
  • Something this important has 107 posts.

    One hundred and seven posts.

    If Microsoft or Linux or Apple had been mentioned in the title or article there would have been 700 and most of them would be:

    Windows..."something or other"
    Mac..."We'd do it better"
    Linux..."LINUX!!!!!"

    Instead we get a bunch of jokes. Hey tech guys, what are you going to do when the doctors are gone? I see a nerd with a gangrene leg and 20 of you arguing over what to do while...you figure it out.
  • Whilst this scanner does have advantages over previous systems, it is an advance on previous CT (aka CaT) scanners, rather than something entirely new. From the couple of actual facts that sneak into the story, this is a 256 'slice' scanner, compared to previously available 64 slice systems. This means that for each rotation of the x-ray tube round the patient, 256 simultaneous sets of density measurements are made. The total detector length will be in the region of 128 to 160 mm, rather than 40 mm previou

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