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[[Narrator] This is our new premium CT scanner, hi-def.]
[Global research was asked to revolutionize the way we take imagery.]
[[Jim Vortuli] In a history of computer tomography, there have only been]
[2 simulated materials ever been used, and we were asked to invent the third.]
[A scintillator is a ceramic that converts x-rays into light.]
[Most everyone is familiar with the garnet gemstone that you might have on your ring.]
[What we have here is a fully man-made garnet.]
[In the world of luminescent science -- luminescent being things that convert]
[x-rays into light -- the garnet crystal structure is very efficient at doing that.]
[What we did which is new and novel, is change the chemistry ]
[of these well-known garnets and make them even more sensitive.]
[They produce more light for a given x-ray.]
[What you're seeing here glowing is the gemstone simulator.]
[It's being illuminated by a UV flashlight.]
[This is exactly what it is designed to do in a CT scanner.]
[It's designed to take x-rays that are being cast on the simulator, is then converted into light.]
[[Bob Senzig] The gemstone detector pushes the technology]
[with respect to resolution, pushes new capabilities in spectral imagining ]
[that have never been seen before in CT.]
[There are certain materials in the body that have the same density]
[but have a different composition.]
[This system will be able to differentiate those materials.]
[It was a bunch of scientists that understood about what makes things sinnilate ]
[with the periodic table, and we started out with hundreds of different compounds.]
[[Carl Vess] This is the gemstone pilot facility.]
[What we're doing here is actually making prototype batches for GE health care.]
[This is the building block of what gemstone is, so what we end up doing]
[is taking individual powders of each one of these different atoms.]
[This powder is the first time that the garnet has been formulated,]
[and that powder is compacted and pressed and forms these wafers here.]
[We then heat this up, and that oven converts them into this yellow material]
[It's done with a much larger piece of this, almost like a brick size]
[at their manufacturing center, is we dice it up into small pixels.]
[Here is a gemstone detector.]
[This is comprises the portion of the whole CT scanner.]
[The response has been fabulous.]
[They've just seen features that they've never seen before.]
[Essentially, freezing the motion of the heart, they can look into the blood vessels ]
[that line heart and tell that they're fully closed,]
[or what's even amazing to me, even partially closed.]
[It's really delivering what the doctors want, which they want better image clarity.]
[They want to see more. They want to know more.]
