I’m more accustomed to the science coming from photon-counting x-ray telescopes, not so much being the target of a photon-counting x-ray microscope, but … 🤷♂️
Anyway, a CT scan was just part yesterday’s emergency visit to the urology department of the Heidelberg University Clinic 😬
A pretty miserable way to spend seven hours on a Saturday, so do yourselves a favour:
Drink more water, folks 🚰
No, more than that 🚰🚰
Keep going 🚰🚰🚰✌️
FWIW, to satisfy the geek in you, this particular CT scanner was a Siemens Somatom Edge Plus. It emits 70-140keV x-ray photons which are converted into visible photons using a ceramic scintillator material & registered by CMOS arrays with built-in A/D converters, in Siemens' Stellar-Infinity detector. The scanner takes 128 slices in a few seconds, has a 0.3mm spatial resolution, & the drum rotates at over 200rpm.
@saarmuller Ah, good spot – I must’ve jumbled up some information when googling yesterday (blame the drugs 🤪). Indeed the SOMATOM model CT scanner used on me wasn’t photon counting, but the new NAEOTOM is. It avoids the x-ray to optical photon conversion via a scintillator, using a CdTe detector to measure the x-rays & their energy directly. Similar to what we do in astronomy.
The hospital staff didn’t offer this info though; I just searched for it after based on the machine name 🤷♂️🙂
@saarmuller I’m guessing that if they can now single photon count, that will improve the signal-to-noise quite a lot, & thus allow them to turn down the x-ray dose. Which is a good thing, I guess.
Plus the energy resolution of the direct x-ray detectors should be much better & could that yield better discrimination between various densities etc. in the body?
@Luke_Drury Well, I was quite literally piss-off, unable to urinate at all, yesterday morning, which is what precipitated the trip to the hospital. I'd had waves of pain at 3am, 7am, & again at 10am, & they were getting worse.
I was not in a very pleasant mood until I finally got some pain relief around 3pm – there were several other patients in the urology department with even worse problems than me & the team were very busy.
@Luke_Drury It is said that women who've had both kidney stones & babies rate the former as more painful.
Having seen my wife give birth to both of our kids without any pain killers, I'm leery about that, but it's certainly the worst pain I've ever been in.
There are moments when you find yourself thinking "enough – just end it; hit me over the head with a shovel."
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