Build Your Own CT Scanner

[Linas] built himself an x-ray generator for a scholarship contest. We assume this wasn’t enough of a challenge for [Linas] because after the x-ray generator was done, he used his project to model objects in 3D (Google Translate link). It’s an amazing build, leaving us feeling sorry for the guy that came in second place to the home-made CT scanner.

The theory behind a CT scanner is fairly simple – take a series of x-rays of an object around an axis of rotation. From there, it’s a fairly simple matter to digitize the x-ray images to produce a 3D model. The hard part is building the x-ray generator. [Linas] used directional x-ray tubes, a few power supplies and from what we can gather x-ray film instead of a CCD sensor. The film was scanned into a computer and reassembled to get a 3D image.

[Linas] doesn’t seem too keen on giving away the schematics for his build to any old joker on the Internet because of the high voltage and radiation components of his build. Still, it’s an amazing build.

Check out the YouTube demo of [Linas]’s CT scanner imaging an old computer mouse and a reconstruction of the same data done in MATLAB after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78M8du7o4iQ&w=470]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5n6oSAmaGs&w=470]

29 thoughts on “Build Your Own CT Scanner

  1. While this is (barely) Computed Tomography (he’s taking a series of images, computing the structure of the object…and then producing slices, which is the tomography part)…

    …it’s not, by any means, a “scanner”.

  2. You can, but you have to remove the leaded front glass, replace it with something transparent to x-rays, redo the vacuum, and use a higher voltage power supply. I think there are some vacuum tube amplifiers which happen to work very well as x-ray generators though.

  3. Incredible work. Sadly- the lethality of such power densities and the DISTANCE such radiation can be dangerous at precludes anyone publishing complete plans.

    Perhaps if there were a sane tort environment or that lawyers did not view an accident victim as the Golden Ticket? That’s my “Social Hack” for today :>

    The technical path to examine for advancements might be found by looking for “Lixiscope” technology

    1. don’t worry. x-ray source works like flash light. it creates beam of light in one direction, and you just point it to concrete wall in basement, all other rays are captured by shielding, and just some change path because of Rayleigh scattering
      just 2mm of lead can protect from 120KeV light

  4. As an employee of a company that makes CT scanners, I’m enjoying both the drooling and the slapping going on in this thread.

    We have the greatest equipment and the best software.

    We also have the crappiest CEO (he’s in obama’s silly and mythical “Jobs” cabinet) as well as the sales division. We expect more layoffs soon.

    Linas, if you need people to start your own company with, there’s a lot of people out here that will be available soon. I wont say the name of the company, but we’re probably big competitors with “SPECIFIC Electric”. lol.

  5. I have plans to make a homemade PET scanner using the radiation from 40K.
    Seems that this might work with very long exposure times as tested using my modified SBM20 and also with the ZP1310 (de-filtered ZP1313/4)
    Trouble is getting that many tubes is awfully expensive but worth it.

  6. Additional: The experiments so far suggest that 40K can indeed be used. I did get some problems but easily resolved.
    For various reasons smaller tubes may be better here so SBM-21 though not that sensitive is adequate at the interesting gamma range (300-513keV) and can also be used for monitoring TGF events.
    An event that causes many or all of the tubes to pulse at nearly the same time is likely to be significant.

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