2009
AIP Industrial Physics Forum: Developments from
CERN could make
CT
scanners even better at detecting early cancer cells or
other disease indicators.The particle physics research
laboratory's work to create photon counters that can count ten
million photons per second—up by a factor of one hundred
from previous generation counters—
have
been integrated into CT systems and had their first trial
run with patients. There are more developments that will have
to take place before the photon-counters can fullfill their
full potential, but early work presented at the recent
AAPM meeting
looks promising.While CERN made the progress in
photon
counter technology, it has been representatives from
industry who put them together with CT scanners. At the
AIP and AAPM
meeting, Reuven Levinson, a Technology Development Leader
at
GE
Healthcare in the CT Engineering group in Haifa, Israel,
announced the first use of a photon counting CT system on human
patients. The CT's X-ray detector counts the individual photons
and measures their energy. Levinson and his team built the
photon counting CT system and had it installed last year at the
Rabin
Medical Center in Tel Aviv, Israel.
