Scientists have developed the world's first 3D color X-rays

Image: MARS Bioimaging Ltd

The classic x-rays in black and white move on the bench.

The New Zealand company MARS Bioimaging has developed the first 3D X-rays in color, and they are so real that it's rather annoying.

a decade by scientists Phil and Anthony Butler, father and son, in collaboration with the universities of Canterbury and Otago, the MARS system is a new medical scanner using technology developed at CERN. And it might be more accurate than the typical scans that you get from a doctor's office these days.

The MARS scanner uses a family of chips called Medipix, originally developed to track particles at Large Hadron Collider. Medipix works like your camera – when the electronic shutter is open, every particle is detected and counted, creating high-resolution, accurate images without noise.

When they are used with the Butlers MARS scanner and its software, the chips help produce highly accurate and striking three-dimensional color renditions of the human body that distinguish materials like metal, bone , soft tissues and fats with different tones.

Here is a completely fascinating, if not a bit horrifying, video of an "ankle through," a series of 3D images taken by the MARS scanner. You can see skin and cartilage in beige, bone in white, and soft tissue and muscle in red.

This one is also an ankle, this time in video rotation.

You can see the bones of the ankle because the skin and the muscles have been rendered translucent. You can also see padding in the heel area, which looks super juicy and spongy – you walk on this every day, guys.

It all depends on the chip Medipix3, one of the most advanced chips in the world, according to its manufacturers.

"This technology distinguishes the machine from a diagnostic standpoint because its small pixels and its precise energy resolution allow this new imaging tool to obtain images that no other tool can." imaging can not reach, "says Phil Butler in a statement issued by CERN. 19659008] According to the company, MARS Bioimaging Ltd plans to market the scanner in the future. Until now, it has been used to study cancer, vascular diseases that lead to strokes and heart attacks, as well as bone and joint health.

"In all of these studies, promising preliminary results suggest that when spectral imaging is commonly used in clinics, it will allow more accurate diagnosis and personalization of treatment," said Anthony Butler in his release.

Patients with rheumatology in New Zealand will be scanned in clinical trials in the coming months.

Just imagine that your body parts are scanned with this technology. If it's too real to think about seeing inside your own skin, just think about how much it might be more accurate than black and white X-rays.