INSIDE THE SCANNER

How a CT scanner takes images of our insides.

Cooling To prevent overheating produced from the source, there are several liquid-filled cooling units.

X-ray X-ray beams are generated from a vacuum X-ray tube. These beams interact differently with different tissue and create contrasting images.

Rotating detector To collect images from all angles of the patient’s body, the detectors circulate around the bed.

Fan Fans are used to pump out any warm air from the gantry to keep the machine cool.

Monitor The accompanying computer assembles the images of slices of the body on an adjacent monitor.

Gantry Known as the ring tunnel, or gantry, this is where the patient will be positioned for the duration of the scan.

A rotating X-ray source takes cross-section images.