
First ever color X-ray on a human - Vaslo
https://www.yahoo.com/news/first-ever-colour-x-ray-human-005837590.html
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lars_thomas
Photon counting sensors have been available for quite a while. This is
unfortunately not new. It’s not ’color’ it’s multi channel imaging. X-ray
tubes produce wide spectrum of x-rays, these type of sensors are able to put
different bands to different buckets.

Coloring is arbitrary and conveniently chosen in the example to look like
visible wavelength response as if the patient was dissected. It does not work
for more complicated anatomy and even in this case needs very likely post
processing.

I wish we could have a peek inside the patient as if we had opened it up but
this is not yet that.

~~~
ekun
Which similar to images we see of space where they have altered detectors'
responses from different wavelengths of light to be images in the visible
spectrum. So we produce beautiful images, but they aren't accurate to what
space would look like to the naked eye.

~~~
klipt
Probably more useful than the naked eye in many cases. The colors our eyes can
see mostly evolved to detect ripe fruit, not diseased tissue.

~~~
lurquer
Why did fruit evolve to change colors when ripe?

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ttsda
In many cases so animals would eat them, digest the seeds, and poop them out
somewhere else.

~~~
lurquer
Why did animals evolve an attraction to ripe-colored fruit?

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RyJones
There are slightly more details on the product page [0]. It looks like they
have a small bore version right now, they're working on making a human sized
one. There is one test image that shows part of a wrist, a watch, and part of
a hand.

[0]
[https://www.marsbioimaging.com/mars/overview/](https://www.marsbioimaging.com/mars/overview/)

~~~
phyzome
Oh yeah, and if you scroll down, there's a lot more detail. Sounds like you
can customize the color mapping somewhat in their software -- there's mention
of adjustable binning and customizable energy thresholds.

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scentoni
Another article at [http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/design-engineering-
news/firs...](http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/design-engineering-
news/first-3d-colour-x-ray-of-a-human-using-cern-technology/176081/) It sounds
like the chips are detecting the energy of each xray, which is equivalent to a
wavelength, and that data is then used to synthesize a 3D image.

~~~
barbegal
The 3D nature of the output is still generated using tomography (CT). The
colour comes from the x-ray energy which is detected using two thresholds
giving effectively two channels of data.

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wycx
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medipix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medipix)

After much searching I found the energy resolution here [1], stated as <2 keV.
For comparison, a modern silicon drift diode fluorescence detector will have
an energy resolution of ~130 eV.

[1]
[http://dpnc.unige.ch/seminaire/talks/campbell.pdf](http://dpnc.unige.ch/seminaire/talks/campbell.pdf)

Also:
[http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-0221/8/02/C02...](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-0221/8/02/C02016/pdf)

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sloka
“The new device, based on the traditional black-and-white X-ray, incorporates
particle-tracking technology developed for CERN's Large Hadron Collider.”

Now i have an easy to understand example to make my skeptical friends
understand how CERN’s research benefits us in myriad ways.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Fundamental science research always has applications decades in the future.
It's pretty rare that practical applications are found "now".

~~~
s0rce
Famously Hertz claimed there would be no application of radio waves.

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nathan_f77
This feels like a real black swan event to me. I guess I just assumed that
black-and-white x-rays were as good as it gets, and that there wasn't any room
for improvement. I've never even thought about the idea of a color x-ray. It's
very exciting to see something that could change the entire field of
radiology.

~~~
notadoc
OsiriX (and others) have been rendering radiology imaging in color and 3D for
quite a while.

[https://www.osirix-viewer.com/osirix/osirix-md/](https://www.osirix-
viewer.com/osirix/osirix-md/)

[https://www.osirix-viewer.com/resources/dicom-image-
library/](https://www.osirix-viewer.com/resources/dicom-image-library/)

Patients can even download the lite version and review their own images.

~~~
ashildr
While the title is disingenuous because it’s easy to misunderstand it’s
actually very close to the truth. Xrays are just a very energetic form of
light or electromagnetic radiation, above the spectrum of visible light.

Until now we only measure the general brightness of the xrays, and osirix
translates (even marginal) differences in brightness into different colors.
This makes features of the same brightness easier to spot for a human.

This new technique actually measures different wavelengths of the xrays on our
detectors and since we call the different wavelengths in visual light "color"
it's a good analogy to call them the same for xrays. It can differentiate
different colors of xrays.

This is really promising, nuances in chemical composition may lead to
differences in opacity for different wavelengths.

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matheist
Article is short on details. Do they take pictures with X-rays at three
different wavelengths, and then render the three resulting images as
individual color channels?

~~~
tshannon
And get 3 times the does of radiation? Seems impractical, but possibly true.

~~~
sametmax
A chest x-ray will give you 0.1 millisieverts. That's the 60th of the dose
limit used in scientific facilities like cern. And 200 times less than for
radiation workers.

It's still ok, it's not supposed to be that of a regular procedure.

~~~
russdill
It actually looks like it's a CT scan, which is a type of x-ray. A chest CT
scan is 7 mSv.

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Rjevski
The GDPR consent screen for this is scary. They want to share your data with
around 200 different "partners".

~~~
PeterisP
And a year ago they wouldn't even tell you that.

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ptrott2017
I remember discussing this as a possibility with Phil and Anthony in CERN
Cafetera in 2007/2008 when they had first licensed some imaging tech from
CERN. It is absolutely thrilling to see how far the team have come since then
and to see them start to get the wider coverage their achievements deserve.
Seeing this on HN just made my day.

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Jaruzel
Direct link to the source:

[https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/07/first-3d-colour-x-
ra...](https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/07/first-3d-colour-x-ray-human-
using-cern-technology)

------
randcraw
How much exposure to radiation is needed for this? Their brochure indicates
20-80 mGy/mSv. But a typical clinical head CT is only 2 mGy. AFAIK, exposures
that high would not be acceptable for clinical human use.

It's probably inevitable that a 'spectral' scanner requires greater exposure
than clinical CT scanners since the intensity of a spectral X-ray source
apparently varies during the scan. This implies slower scans and more X-ray
exposure than a conventional CT.

Apparently that's why MARS' current product is intended for preclinical (non-
human) use only.

~~~
klipt
I think regular CT already causes cancer in ~1/2000 uses. So 10x that dose
would probably cause cancer in ~1/200 uses? That's pretty scary.

~~~
smt88
That's assuming dosage has a linear relationship with instances of cancer.
Scary regardless, though.

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plesqui
This is very interesting! I can't wait to learn more about it. There are,
however, some questions to consider:

\- For a given procedure, will the radiation dose be higher than its
corresponding 'black and white' X-Ray?

\- If the radiation dose is higher, does the color add additional information
or does it increase the diagnostic capabilities? Traditional X-rays (CT)
already distinguish between soft-tissue, bone, fat, cartilage... so will the
color distinguish structures within soft-tissue?

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ortusdux
The videos on their press page are stunning. Especially the ankle rotation
video.

[https://www.marsbioimaging.com/mars/media-
pack/](https://www.marsbioimaging.com/mars/media-pack/)

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JyRdqyU-j5PambGUgfs4Cx5uKf3...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JyRdqyU-j5PambGUgfs4Cx5uKf3wdSG4/view)

~~~
1996
Doesn't look that much better than a thin slice CT with custom colormaps
("CLUTs"), using a regular greyscale for the high density tissue (bone), and a
reduced alpha channel for the low density tissue rendered in yellow.

You can get that with a Dicom station and 5 minutes, or for free using Osirix
at home and trial/error if you are not used to CTs.

Ask for the CD next time you get a scan, or download one of the many examples,
and play with Osirix.

~~~
1123581321
That may be, but an X-ray is a simpler and cheaper procedure. To achieve
“feature parity” with something more expensive is an advance.

I’m looking up the things you mentioned and they’re interesting, though. I’d
love to see imaging and home-computed assessments become a bigger part of the
“quantified self” movement.

~~~
natezb
What you linked to _is_ a type of CT scan (CT uses X-rays).

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s0rce
Do you need a different detector? Can't you just do multiple exposures at
different energies like dexa?

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Exuma
This honestly seems like raw black magic. How is this possible?

~~~
jrockway
I mean, all color is is your brain's perception of 3 input channels. Your eye
can detect (roughly) the amount of stimulation from blue light, green light,
and red light... your brain interprets this as a color.

You can do the same thing for X-rays, or any 3-channel data source.

(Fun fact: because of this, there are colors that your brain can understand
but aren't wavelengths of light. Magenta is seen when your blue and red
sensors are activated... but there is no single wavelength of light that can
do this. Meanwhile, your eye can't tell the difference between monochromatic
yellow light, or red and green light being received simultaneously. This is
why RGB monitors work, and why you can't represent every color you can see on
a computer screen.)

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tzahola
TL;DR it’s CT with false colors

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elorant
Every now and then a question pops as to why we have to invest billions in
researching particle physics and how can it improve our lives. Well this is
how.

~~~
notadoc
Surely much more to come too.

