At last, a scanner that can see it all

摘要

It's the holy grail of medical imaging - a safe, non-invasive, high-resolution scanner that can peer inside organs, pinpoint particular tissues and even differentiate between benign and malignant growths. And it is within reach at last. Designed and built by biomedical engineers at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, the High-resolution Ultrasonic Transmission Tomography (HUTT) scanner uses ultrasound to create three-dimensional images of soft tissue. Unlike conventional ultrasound scanners, which detect the echo of sound waves as they bounce off tissues, HUTT uses the sound that passes through the tissue to create an image. Because 2000 times as much sound is transmitted through the tissue as is echoed back, this allows HUTT to produce images of much finer resolution.