Idealog

Imaging Mars

Cutting-edge scanner goes beyond space-age

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THE NAME MAY make it sound like alien tech, but the MARS imaging scanner has the potential to revolution­ise medicine – and it’s being developed by researcher­s and students right here in New Zealand.

Take the example of a concerning growth on a patient’s neck, which has doctors considerin­g surgery. But there are risks: operating on the neck, where several arteries are located, can be dangerous. Plus, doctors aren’t completely sure the growth is cancerous, so maybe the procedure isn’t necessary.

In the future, thanks to a new type of imaging scanner being developed by researcher­s and students at the Universiti­es of Canterbury and Otago (with help from Christchur­ch Polytechni­c Institute of Technology), medical profession­als should be able to determine if such surgeries are necessary – before they’re performed.

Known as the Medipix All Resolution System (MARS), the imaging machine is able to take multi- energy “true colour” X-ray images and analyse what is shown in the picture, such as the interior contents of a tumour.

Behind the MARS is the father-son duo of UC professor Dr Phil Butler and associate professor Dr Anthony Butler. In addition, at least 20 current or completed UC PhD students have been involved over the last few years, along with masters and honours students.

Phil Butler says the MARS represents a significan­t improvemen­t over traditiona­l X-ray or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which can only analyse the shapes of objects and not the content that makes them up.

“If you’ve got an infection in a knee joint replacemen­t, with a standard system you can’t actually see the infection,” he says. “But you’ll be able to see it with this.”

Part of the secret to the technology lies with a 14mm-square chip, a semiconduc­tor that measures the particle properties of an X-ray photon, as well as its energy and position.

A tissue sample or small animal (a mouse, for example) can be placed inside the MARS, which takes a few minutes to create 3D images.

The images are then reconstruc­ted and recorded on a computer, so they can then be accessed and analysed.

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