UC Davis First to Get Canon’s Ultra-High Resolution CT

Clinicians at the University of California, Davis Health are now scanning patients using an Ultra-High Resolution CT scanner, the only of its kind in the United States. The Aquilion Precision from Canon Medical Systems is able to resolve things down to the 150 micron level, allowing for diagnostic insights previously impossible.

The capability is made possible in large part because of a new ultra-high resolution detector that provides more than twice the pixel density that many other existing CT scanners can. It has 160 rows of detectors, each of which is only 0.25 mm in width. The X-ray tube, rotating gantry, and the software that reconstructs the scan into a 3D image, all had to be adapted to deliver all the new data that is generated and at a high speed.

The X-ray tube in particular sports the smallest focal spot in the industry, which it has to do to allow the detector to achieve a high resolution.

Seeing at a higher resolution doesn’t simply make things easier for doctors. New insights may provide a way to diagnose something in a new way or to spot clinical correlations. Certainly this scanner will be used in clinical studies at UC Davis to help identify these mysteries.

Here’s a Canon Medical promo video presenting the Aquilion Precision:

Product page: Aquilion Precision…

Via: Canon Medical Systems…