for the first time a New Zealand company
that scanned a human body using a
breakthrough color medical scanner based
on the medipix3 technology
developed at CERN father and son
scientists professors fill an Anthony
Butler from Canterbury and otayo
universities spent a decade building and
refining their product Medipix is a
family of readout chips for particle
imaging and detection the original
concept of matific s' is that it works
like a camera detecting and counting
each individual particle hitting the
pixels when it's 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 hybrid
pixel detector technology was initially
developed to address the needs of
particle tracking at the Large Hadron
Collider and successive generations of
medea chips have demonstrated over 20
years the great potential of the
technology outside of high-energy
physics Mars by imaging limited which is
commercializing the 3d scanner is linked
to the universities of Otago and
Canterbury the latter together with more
than 20 research institutes forms the
third generation of the maddox
collaboration the maddox three chip is
the most advanced chip available today
and Professor Phil Butler recognizes
that this technology sets the Machine
apart diagnostically because it's small
pixels and accurate energy resolution
mean that this new imaging tool is able
to get images that no other imaging tool
can achieve Mars solution couples the
spectroscopic information generated by
the maddox 3 enable detector with
powerful algorithms to generate 3d
images the colors 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 in the coming months
orthopedic and Rheumatology patients in
New Zealand will be scanned by the
revolutionary Mars scanner in a clinical
trial that is a world-first
paving the way for a potentially routine
use of this new generation equipment
