Okay, I'm going to take some pictures
of your head now.
I'm going to raise the bed up...
An initial x-ray of this patient
revealed a fracture.
However, the doctor responsible
is also worried
that there might be damage
to the top of the spine.
So a CT scan is being performed.
Alan is now being placed
in the CT scanner
and the radiographer
uses a laser beam
to place his head
in precisely the right location.
CT scanning
is essentially an x-ray procedure
but the x-ray source
is rotated around the patient
and the intensity recorded
on the opposite side of the patient.
Using data
from a large number of angles
the computer reconstruction can
produce a two-dimensional map
of the tissues
in a slice of the body.
We're now going
to choose the protocols
that we're going to use
to do the head.
So we're going to click on the
appropriate part of the body here
and we're going to do an adult brain.
Okay, the scan's just about to start
to just keep nice and still.
Planning is done
by taking a pilot scan.
The patient is moved
through the gantry
but the source
remains stationary on one side.
This produces an image
similar to a planer x-ray.
This pilot scan is taken
in what is called the sagittal plane.
We're going to do thinner sections
through the base of the skull,
then we'll do wider ones as we
go towards the top of the skull.
So now we can do our actual scan.
Then we can produce the images
that the radiologist will look at.
We can scroll through
the images we've just got.
We can alter
the grey levels of the images
so we can see
different bits of anatomy.
We'll look at the actual brain,
so we're going to go through.
We're look for any asymmetry
or any abnormalities.
When we get further up
we can change the window levels
so we can see the ventricles better.
Just going through there.
Now we're at the top.
And as this patient's got
a suspected base of skull fracture,
what we'd now do is go back
and change it to bone windows.
The bone is white
and everything else is now dark
so it's not seen so clearly.
So we're looking through to see if
there's any dark lines in the skull
which could represent fractures.
The concern over the potential
for injury to the top of the spine
has been dismissed.
But there is a concern that there
may be some damage to the brain.
So it's decided to do an MRI scan.
