Digital X-ray can scan body in 13 seconds

By FOSTER KLUG : Associated Press Writer
Jun 12, 2003 : 12:52 pm ET

BALTIMORE -- A digital X-ray system once used to search South African miners for stolen diamonds will now allow Baltimore trauma doctors to scan a patient's entire body in 13 seconds.

The University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center will start using the Statscan imaging system next week, becoming the first hospital outside of South Africa to do so, officials said Wednesday.

Conventional X-rays take up to 45 minutes to develop, and full-body scans have to be pieced together from several X-rays, taking more time and forcing the X-ray technicians to repeatedly move an injured patient.

With the Statscan, a clear image of the entire body pops up on a computer screen in seconds after the scan is completed, allowing quick access to information at a time when diagnosing a patient's injuries is most crucial.

"I've been waiting my whole career for something like this to come along," said Dr. Stuart Mirvis, Shock Trauma's radiology director. "The speed and image quality of this system is astounding ... This will save lives."

Besides faster and clearer images, the machine, which costs about $400,000, also exposes patients to 75 percent less radiation than a conventional full-body X-ray series, doctors said.

"If the radiation doses are low, and you don't understand everything that's happening to a person, it looks like this could be used as a triage to find out what's going on, and quickly," said Dean Chapman, an Illinois Institute of Technology physicist specializing in X-ray imaging.

Several South African hospitals currently use the machine, made by Lodox Systems, which the Food and Drug Administration cleared for sale in America in October.

"This is space-age stuff," said Herman Potgieter, who invented the machine in the late 1980s for South African mine owners trying to fight widespread diamond theft by their workers. He developed the system as a safe, fast way to search workers finishing their shifts for hidden or swallowed diamonds.

A similar X-ray system, Direct Digital Radiography, has been sold to hospitals for about two years, Mirvis said. While it's as quick as Statscan, he said, it pictures just one part of the body.

The head-to-toe imaging will allow doctors to detect injuries that aren't immediately apparent -- letting them trace a bullet's trajectory, for example.

"This system is moving over the whole body in one shot," Mirvis said. "It's combining a new twist to technology that's already out there, but it's still a pretty big leap."