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.
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Orchard, J., Yeow, J.T.W. (2008). Toward a Flexible and Portable CT Scanner. In: Metaxas, D., Axel, L., Fichtinger, G., Székely, G. (eds) Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2008. MICCAI 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5242. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85990-1_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85990-1_23
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