SUBSTANCE HARDNESS MEASURING INSTRUMENT, BIOLOGICAL TISSUE HARDNESS MEASURING INSTRUMENT, AND RECORDING MEDIUM FOR OUTPUTTING HARDNESS DATA ON SUBSTANCE WHEN DATA IS INPUTTED TO IT

摘要

A substance hardness measuring instrument which can measure the hardness of a substance having a high spatial resolution in a wide region, especially the hardness of a tissue of an organism such as a tissue of an internal organ or a minute portion in an entire organ and which can express the softness and stiffness of a tissue of an organism in terms of hardness from the CT value measured by an X-ray CT apparatus. The hardness measuring apparatus comprises an X-ray scanning unit (12) for scanning and irradiating a subject(14) with an X-ray beam, a CT value output unit (20) for determining and outputting a CT value by measuring the intensity of the X-ray beam transmitted through the subject(14) a storage device (23) for storing the correspondence between the CT value data on a plurality of reference tissue and the hardness data, a hardness conversion device (24) for converting the CT value into the hardness by using the correspondence, and a display (25) for outputting the hardness determined.