New Super Scanner Can Scan Body in Under a Minute 129
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%" (Score:5, Funny)
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I can scan a body in 3 seconds... (Score:2, Informative)
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bad idea (Score:2)
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.
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It uses high powered lasers, and then runs the individual slices through an industrial scanner.
They have yet to find any volunteers though.
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This scan would make "House" episodes... (Score:3, Funny)
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You missed it. (Score:3, Informative)
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Actually that would be Louisiana or California (Score:2)
Re:This scan would make "House" episodes... (Score:4, Funny)
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Which reminds me, the Don would like to sees you.
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It could be Grey's Anatomy. *shudder*
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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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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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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.
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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).
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To quote Independence Day:
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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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
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I don't remember what his wife used to poison him but it was in liquid form.
256 slices? (Score:3, Funny)
Other applications (Score:3, Insightful)
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I think this is it (Score:1)
Airport security (Score:3, Funny)
Already done. (Score:2)
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*)
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Re:Already done. (Score:5, Funny)
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This was long before HIPAA, of course. I imagine that suc
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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.
with the two last slashdot stories... (Score:1)
X-Ray or MRI? (Score:2)
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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Re:X-Ray or MRI? (Score:5, Informative)
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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)
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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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)
From my post elsewhere in this article...
The next big leap in X-ray imaging is likely to be
3D X-ray technology (Score:2)
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Re:X-Ray or MRI? (Score:4, Insightful)
Press release games ... (Score:1)
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 new scan techs... (Score:2)
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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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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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*Approximately ten of them. Then the pain starts to set in, and the systemic organ failure...
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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
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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.
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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...
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Friggin Great (Score:2)
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.
Cross-article commenting (Score:1)
Seriously though, I think this is an excellent advance, since some people really have claustr
Oblig. Car Analogy (Score:2)
except you're totally wrong (Score:2)
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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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
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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.
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Yes of course the radiation reduction and practically every other benefit is overplayed in TFA. These are journalists, right? They overplay everything; they live their entire lives with the emotion chip overclocked by 200%. That's how they got into a career that consists entirely
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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."
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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
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You're right about the use of contrast, I ma
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The article claims it reduces radiation by as much as 80%... compare
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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)
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.
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.
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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
Routine scans (Score:1)
Oh hell man... (Score:2)
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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Spooky (Score:2)
(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
A bit out of date (Score:1)
Oblig. (Score:1)
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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.
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Heavy Foot of Government (Score:2)
sounds useful (Score:2, Funny)
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then why does it keep displaying $847.63
Good luck getting your HMO to pay for that! (Score:2)
Remember the Full Body Scan fad? (Score:1)
Still, I wonder if this thing can export the images into a common 3d app file for use in Maya, Softimage, or 3dsMax?
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80%... (Score:2)
Cool yes, but it's still down a bad path.
Only You'all can turn something good into shit (Score:1)
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.
Evolution rather than revolution... (Score:1)
No, you can't (Score:1)
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