A New Zealand company has produced the world's
first 3D colour X-rays of living human body
parts
It scanned, for the first time, a human body
using a breakthrough colour medical scanner
based on the Medipix3 technology developed
at CERN.
Medipix is a family of read-out chips for
particle imaging and detection.
The original concept of Medipix is that it
works like a camera, detecting and counting
each individual particle hitting the pixels
when its electronic shutter is open.
This enables high-resolution, high-contrast,
very reliable images, making it unique for
imaging applications in particular in the
medical field.
MARS Bioimaging Ltd's solution couples the
spectroscopic information generated by the
Medipix3 enabled detector with powerful algorithms
to generate 3D images.
The colours represent different energy levels
of the X-ray photons as recorded by the detector
and hence identifying different components
of body parts such as fat, water, calcium,
and disease markers.
So far, researchers have been using a small
version of the MARS scanner to study cancer,
bone and joint health, and vascular diseases
that cause heart attacks and strokes.
As all the information is contained within
the energy of the photon, and the distribution
of photons, a high radiation dose is not necessary
to achieve a high quality image.
This has benefits for researchers planning
to do longitudinal studies, repeatedly scanning
the same subject.
MARS spectral CT delivers more accurate information
about location and density of specific targets,
which offers the potential to improve the
accuracy of dose calculation in treatments
such as radiotherapy.
