Saving More Lives by Building a Better Scanner

June 23, 2008 | Source: Popular Science

Toshiba’s new Aquilion ONE computed-tomography (CT) scanner could change the way doctors diagnose and treat such illnesses as stroke and heart attack, making many standard tests unnecessary.

The ONE does nearly everything–filming, in high-resolution, dynamic volume imagery, how organs function–in 20 minutes or less, for under $1,000 and with 80 percent fewer x-rays than other CT scanners.

A current CT machine takes pictures of organs by the slice, and the picture is stitched together. It doesn’t convey how the organ is functioning. The ONE, using 320 ultra-high-resolution x-ray detectors, each half a millimeter wide, rotates once around an organ and shows not just what it looks like but its blood flow too.