The super scanner that lets doctors strip us down to bones and blood vessels

12 April 2012

They are pictures from the frontier of medical technology, revealing the interior of the human body with a clarity never seen before.

One exposes the skull and neck bones as if they were part of a bare skeleton. Another, covering the hip area, displays bones, blood vessels and part of the digestive system.

A third picture shows the heart, with the vital blood vessels that keep its muscles healthy and pumping, standing out in precise detail.

They were taken with a 256-slice X-ray scanner – the latest of its kind.

Quite apart from providing stunning three-dimensional images from within the body, the £1million machine also reduces the radiation dose given to patients by up to 80 per cent on other scanners.

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Clarity: Blood vessels in this skull are revealed

Its crystal-clear images, which can be rotated and viewed from different directions, will help doctors diagnose problems more accurately, particularly when examining the heart or looking for small cancer tumours.

The Brilliance CT machine was unveiled by Philips yesterday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago.

Computerised tomography scanners have been widely used in hospitals for many years. Forty and 64-slice machines have been introduced in recent years.

Tomography is the name for taking images of sections, or slices, of the object to be studied – in this case the human body.

CT scanners combine X-ray images to assemble realistic pictures of organs. The original models gave doctors details such as the thickness of blood vessels and the state of heart valves.

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Along with a swollen blockage of a major blood vessel in this pelvis

But the latest generation provides even more incredibly precise images in a fraction of the time.

Injured patients could have a full body CT scan in less than a minute. The procedure would have taken hours in the case of the first scanners.

The Brilliance CT machine generates pictures by passing X-rays, that last only a few milliseconds, through the patient

As it scans the body, sending out 256 pulses every 0.3 seconds – enough to freeze-frame a beating heart without blurring the image – it also rotates around it.

Jim Fulton, senior vice-president and general manager of Philips CT, said: "From the moment a patient walks in to the time the doctor can look at the scan it would probably be about ten minutes."

"A doctor can look at the data from any angle and rotate it to help this. It works like a normal CT scanner but can cover larger areas of the body as it moves faster, but it produces clearer images too by taking more pictures."

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The heart's own blood vessels are seen

"By being able to cover karger areas of the body, the scans will enable the doctor to give a clear view, especially in areas where the body moves quickly like the heart, as it enables us to freeze that part of the body."

Steve Rusckowski, chief executive officer of Philips Medical Systems, said: "This scanner is so powerful it can capture an image of the entire heart in just two beats while also including technology that has reduced radiation doses."

Only one hospital in the world has the scanner so far – the Metro Health medical centre in Cleveland, Ohio – which has been taking images with the machine for a month.

Last night, chairman of the British Lung Foundation Dr Keith Prowse said: "If you look at the change from the first CT scanners it is a quantum shift as it gives a lot more detail."

"This seems to be another step beyond what we could previously do, it has very high resolution which means you can look at smaller things in the lung and in the airways and you can decide whether there is anything there and how best to get at it."

"In the case of cancer, it will help us see how far it has spread. It will also help us pick up new patterns of abnormality. It promises to be a great advance."

Less than three years ago, the 64-slice scanner was launched which produced such sophisticated images that there were claims that it could revolutionise surgery.

It was brought to public attention in America when chatshow host Oprah Winfrey broadcast images from it of her own heart check-up.

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