Significance of MediPix Technology

Why in news?

Scientists has recently used accelerated particles to produce first three-dimensional colour images of the human body.

What are the concerns with traditional radiological practices?

• X -Ray Techniques - X-ray based technology suffer from the deficit that they can sharply visualise only hard tissues.
• The shadows of soft tissues are less precise, Blood vessels and other conduits are imaged with invasive dyes.
• Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) - It  provides a slightly different picture, based on the difference in water and fat content in tissues.
• Positron emission tomography (PET) - It finds widest use in oncology, all but MRIs use radiation and dyes and chemical markers

What is the recent discovery about?  

• A chip of the Medipix family developed by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, has been used by MARS Bioimaging to take colour see-through images of body parts.
• The hybrid pixel detector technology which the Large Hadron Collider used to track accelerated particles, to produce the first three-dimensional colour images of the human body.  
• The chip family has been in production for 20 years, and CERN’s Knowledge Transfer Group had expected it to contribute to areas outside quantum physics.

What is the significance of MediPix Technology?

• Researchers have already used Medipix to image cancerous tissue, bones and joints and the blood supply to the heart.
• The Medipix3, which MARS Bioimaging intends to commercialise, promises a single solution superior to its predecessors.
• Using algorithms to model very accurate spectroscopic data in three dimensions, it shows all tissues with equal clarity, in colour.
• In the case of a fracture, it show physical damage to a bone and also reveal trauma to surrounding tissue and reveal if blood and nerve supply is compromised.
• It would depict structures exactly as they are, and not all of us are built exactly the same.
• In the near future, when medical care will be customised to the individual, this exactitude would make a difference to the efficacy of care.
• Thus the technology is scaling up rapidly, and holds incredible promise.

Source: The Indian Express