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Monday, 26 November 2007 |
New High Quality Scanner Presented
A new scanner has been unveiled which can produce 3D body images of unprecedented clarity while reducing radiation by some 80%. The new CT machine takes large numbers of X-ray pictures, and combines them using computer technology to produce the final detailed images. It also generates images in a fraction of the time of other scanners: a full body scan takes less than a minute. The Brilliance iCT scanner, made by Philips Medical Systems, was presented at the Radiological Society of North America.
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Steve Rusckowski, the chief executive of Philips Medical Systems, said: "We are seeking to make a difference in how radiologists can prevent, diagnose, treat and monitor disease and allow them to focus more on their patients. This scanner allows radiologists to produce high-quality images and is also designed to reduce patients' exposure to X-rays. It is so powerful it can capture an image of the entire heart in just two beats."
Below are various examples of what the scanner can do
 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.
Computerised tomography (CT) 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. But the latest generation, which is a 256-slice machine, 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."
"By being able to cover larger 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."
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
invented by Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield in Hayes, United Kingdom at the company's laboratories and unveiled in 1972. Some claim the CT scanner is the greatest legacy of the Beatles as it was the huge profits from their worldwide success that enabled EMI, to whom the band was signed, to fund scientific research. At the same time, Allan McLeod Cormack of Tufts University independently invented a similar machine, and the two men shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
 "This is a quantum shift from the first CT scanners as it gives a lot more detail," says Dr Keith Prowse, Chairman of the British Lung Foundation. "It seems to be another step beyond what we were previously able to do. The high resolution enables you to see smaller things in both the lungs and the airways and then 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 significant advance."
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. Doctors at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland are testing a "super scanner" that enables them to take virtual tours inside the body to look for disease and injury.
Medical professionals at the public hospital have been using the high-powered, one-of-a-kind computerized tomography scanner to look for narrowing in heart arteries and bruises on brains.
Philips Medical Systems in nearby Highland Heights -- the world headquarters for its Dutch parent's CT scanner business -- chose Metro Health to test its first iCT scanner because of a more than two-decade relationship with the hospital. Metro Health radiologists have tested many Philips Medical imagers over the last two decades. "We do clinical as well as technology feedback with Philips," said Pedro Diaz, vice chairman of imaging and informatics systems in MetroHealth's radiology department. "We're like an extension of [Philips'] clinical science lab."
 For instance, Metro Health is working with Philips Medical to reduce the dose of radiation that the high-powered scanner administers, he said. Philips scientists such as Atasha Johnson, a validation engineer, spend several hours a day at Metro Health, watching how their scanner is used. Feedback from Metro Health professionals, largely related to workflow questions, helps Philips engineers make their imaging machines functional and efficient.
The relationship gives Metro Health and its patients an early look at cutting-edge technologies, which the hospital gets for free by providing feedback to Philips Medical, Diaz said.
At the presentation of the new scanner Dr. David Rosenblum, vice chairman of radiology and director of interventional radiology for MetroHealth's radiology department gave a demonstration of the powers of the new machine.
“Typically, radiologists look at heart arteries with an invasive and slightly risky test called a catheter angiogram”, said Rosenblum. “During the angiogram, a catheter is threaded through an artery in the arm, neck or groin to the heart, where dye is injected to create an image. Looking at heart arteries without invading the body with a catheter means less risk for patients. The super scanner also exposes patients to less radiation than typical heart catheterizations”.
Rosenblum demonstrated what can be done with a heart image created by the Brilliance iCT. Sitting at a computer screen, he used a mouse to rotate a three-dimensional heart - left and right, up and down. He clicked on an artery, straightened it, and then navigated through it the way a spaceship might fly through a tube in a video game.
"We have the games industry to thank for this technology," said Pedro Diaz.
Rosenblum built a chest around the heart on the computer screen, adding ribs, spine, muscles and skin. Scanners initially were good for imaging only hard tissue, such as bone. Today's more powerful scanners, however, also can image soft tissue, such as cartilage.
The cost of the machine has not yet been disclosed.
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