用电脑诊断肠道病
David vining was playing a video game when he came up with a wild idea:Why not use advanced imaging technology to enable radiologists likehimself to "fly"through the bawels of their patients in search ofpolyps,lesions,and other abnermalities?The idea would take advantageof a new kind of X-ray machine,called spiral CT,which spins around apatient to take as many as 500 pictures in 30 seconds.
Vining and his colleagues at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem,North Carolina,have since developed saftware that combineshundreds of X-ray snapshots into a single three-dimensional image of apatient`s colon,which is displayed on a computer screen.Using ajoystick or mouse,physicians can move through the colon at angle.Patients appreciate the approach too,because it spares them from apainful colonscopy in which a camera-tipped tube is forced through thedigestive tract.About 25 patients have already been examined using"virtual colnoscopy".and cancerous growths were correctly identifiedin four of the patients.
From U.S Popular Science Sep.1995.