Toward a flexible and portable CT scanner.
The very hot and power-hungry x-ray filaments in today's computed tomography (CT) scanners constrain their design to be big and stationary. What if we built a CT scanner that could be deployed at the scene of a car accident to acquire tomographic images before moving the victim? Recent developments in nanotechnology have shown that carbon nanotubes can produce x-rays at room temperature, and with relatively low power needs. We propose a design for a portable and flexible CT scanner made up of an addressable array of tiny x-ray emitters and detectors. In this paper, we outline a basic design, propose a strategy for reconstruction, and demonstrate the concept using a software simulation of the scanner. We also raise a number of issues that still need to be overcome to build such a scanner.
Orchard
Jeff
J
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Canada. jorchard@uwaterloo.ca
Yeow
John T W
JT
D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008904:Miniaturization; D011856:Radiographic Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000295:instrumentation*