Normally, when you think of an x-ray image, you probably think of a black and white image of bones. But now imagine a world where x-ray images have all the colors of the rainbow. Don’t know about you, but that’s right up my street.
A company based in New Zealand has scanned the human body with a color medical scanner, for the first time. The scanner utilized the Medipix3 technology which was developed at CERN by father and son scientists, Professors Phil and Anthony Butler. The pair spent a decade going from initial building to a working final product.
Medipix are a group of particle imaging and detection chips which work in the same way as a camera. They detect and count each and every individual particle hitting the detector and depending on how many x-rays hit a certain area, a different color will be assigned. It was originally built for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to track particles but the latest versions of the Medipix chips have since been seen to offer potential in applications outside of high-energy physics.
A 3D scanner that utilizes the Medipix3 chips will be commercialized by MARS Bioimaging Ltd. Professor Phil Butler says, ‘this technology sets the machine apart diagnostically because its small pixels and accurate energy resolution mean that this new imaging tool is able to get images that no other imaging tool can achieve.’ A combination of a strong algorithm and the Medipix3 detector allows 3D images of the object in question to be taken in incredible detail. Different tissues, which consist of fat and water, amongst other things, can be imaged and identified by the energy of the x-rays from these different parts. Lately, MARS have been using smaller versions of the scanner to study vascular diseases that cause heart attacks and also cancer related health. Professor Anthony Butler says, ‘In all of these studies, promising early results suggest that when spectral imaging is routinely used in clinics it will enable more accurate diagnosis and personalisation of treatment.’
CERN’s Knowledge Transfer Group are all about getting CERN technology out there for applications outside of high-energy physics, in particular, medical applications. The CERN Knowledge Transfer Officer, Aurélie Pezous says, ‘It is always satisfying to see our work leveraging benefits for patients around the world. Real-life applications such as this one fuels our efforts to reach even further.’ The future is looking very bright for the Medipix detector. Scientists hope that within the next few months, orthopaedic and rheumatology patients in New Zealand will be scanned in this colorful way for the first time ever. Watch this space.
This article was adapted from the article published by CERN.
