The MIT Technology Review has the scoop on an invention sure to turn a lot of heads: a portable head CT scanner:
After Gordon and two cofounders started NeuroLogica in 2004, they set out to shrink the power supply and cooling system so they could use smaller x-ray-emitting tubes.
In whole-body CT scanners, these tubes can be 30 centimeters in diameter and 50 centimeters long. NeuroLogica’s engineers used tubes about 10 centimeters in diameter and 15 centimeters long. They created a power system about the size of a microwave oven, with a small fan to cool the tubes.
The combined miniaturizations let them reduce the diameter of the donut-shaped machine to 44 centimeters, while the “donut hole” stayed at 32 centimeters, large enough for a human head. The machine delivers the same resolution as large machines, but the scanning speed is slower: a head scan can take up to two minutes, considerably longer than with a traditional machine.
When we try to imagine life in the ED without those frequent trips to radiology for our syncope and trauma patients… well, we just can’t seem to wrap our heads around it.
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