GE

Transcript: Innovation - Turning X-rays into Light

1. Narrator:

   This is our new premium CT scanner, hi-def. Global research was asked to revolutionize the way we take imagery.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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 that you see here. 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. It's just great to be a part of that.

5. GE imagination at work