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MV Patient on bed with machine being positioned (2 shots)
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CU Doctor indicating X-ray camera and sensors
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CU Monitor showing rapid selection of X-ray pictures (7 shots)
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A team of British medical scientists and technologists have developed an X-ray machine they claim will revolutionise medical diagnosis by producing almost instant, detailed photographs of any human body organ for the first time.



Called a "body scanner", it was developed by EMI which pic??? the "brain scanner" three years ago. It won export orders worth twenty-seven million pounds sterling.



Conventional X-rays can produce adequate pictures of bones but only shadowy images of organs and then only after often unpleasant -- and sometimes dangerous -- chemicals and dyes are swallowed or injected. The body scanner can produce crisp shots of the most remote body organs within seconds.



It works in this way: The frame which rotates around the patient emitting up to eighteen thousand narrow X-ray beams, each passing through the various organs at different angles. Changes in the rays are detected by ultra-sensitive crystals and the information is collected by a computer which rapidly builds a photographic image. It differs from conventional X-rays in two important ways. The myriad-angle beams produce a truer picture than a single X-ray beam and the crystals -- as opposed to photographic film -- are sensitive enough to pick up soft tis???



The new machine has been hailed as the greatest diagnostic advance since the discovery of X-rays by the German physicist Wilhelm Rontgen eighty years ago. The British machine is currently the only one in clinical use. Two more will shortly be installed for trial periods in the United States.



However, at a cost of a quarter of a million pounds for each unit, its use is likely to remain restricted.




Initials CL/2240 CL/2300



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: A team of British medical scientists and technologists have developed a machine that will revolutionise medical diagnosis by producing clear, detailed photographs of any organ in the human body.

The trouble with conventional X-rays is that while they give adequate pictures of bones, they can only produce shadowy images of internal organs and then only after often unpleasant (and sometimes dangerous) chemicals and dyes have been swallowed or injected.

The new device developed at the EMI Laboratories at Hayes, Middlesex, is called a "body scanner". It can produce crisp shots of the most remote soft organs in the body within six seconds. It has been hailed as the greatest diagnostic advance since the discovery of X-rays by the German physicist Wilhelm Rontgen in 1895.

The body scanner is a refined second generation of a similar machine introduced by EMI in 1972 for examining the brain and skull. The original device won Britain export orders worth ???27 million -- mainly to North America.

One of the new ???250,000 machines is now undergoing clinical trials at the Northwick Park hospital at Harrow, just outside London. Two more will shortly be installed for trial periods at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, and the Mallinckrodt Institute, St. Louis, Missouri.