CERN technology used to create the first 3D "radiographs" of human bodies

G The discovery of X-rays by the German scientist Wihlem Rontgen in 1895 hit the world like a scientific bomb. It allowed, for the first time in history, people to look inside humans while they were still alive . Our collective knowledge of the human body was no longer reserved for cutting open corpses in the operating room – diseases could be identified while the patient still had a chance to fight. But now, the new technology has allowed us to look even further into the body and see it in a whole new way.

Half of the strangeness of looking at an x-ray comes from the realization that the fuzzy greyness and the white lines attached you can actually see make up your own flesh and bones. Now, thanks to the technology developed by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), people will be able to look in their bodies and see their vibrant inner color – soft tissue is red, bone is white and greasy like a cloudy yellow. CERN describes the technology as a "revolutionary medical color scanner."

Technically called the MARS X-ray scanner, the machine is based on Medipix3 technology, which works on read chips designed to detect, track and render images of particles. Medipix technology was invented in the early 2000s to allow CERN scientists to track the particles transmitted by the Large Hadron Collider, a very expensive tube that led to the discovery of the Boson particle of Higgs in 2012. CERN says that Medipix works like a camera, "Detect and count every particle hitting the pixels when its electronic shutter is open."

This gives high-resolution, high-contrast images – and, when applied to the human body, allows clear and precise rendering. images that can change the game of medical diagnosis

Colors ci above represent different energy levels of x-ray photons recorded by Medipix technology. In a traditional X-ray machine, rays – which are a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation – pbad through a body to an X-ray detector on the other side of the patient, creating an image that represents the shadows "formed by all the big objects inside us – whether it's a bone or a neighborhood that you have" accidentally "swallowed. Here, the energy levels of X photons allow 3D imaging of many more subtle body components, such as markers of fat, water, calcium, and diseases.

"This technology distinguishes the machine from a diagnostic standpoint because its small pixels and precise energy resolution allow this new imaging tool to obtain images that no other tool can." imaging can not reach, "said co-creator Phil Butler, Ph.D. of the University of Canterbury said in a statement published with research this week.