title: Toward a flexible and portable CT scanner.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Canada. jorchard@uwaterloo.ca
authors.forename: Jeff
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Orchard
authors.forename: John T W
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Yeow
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008904:Miniaturization; D011856:Radiographic Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000295:instrumentation*