Largest Scanner Ever Developed to Produce Faster, More Sensitive Images

One of the world's largest imagers has been developed that could form the basis of future medical scanners. The new technology will allow clinicians to produce more sensitive and faster images of the human body at a lower cost to healthcare professionals.

The innovative technology, which has been developed by engineers from the University of Sheffield (UK) and Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Rutherford-Appleton Laboratories (Didcot, UK), as part of the £4.5m Basic Technology MI-3 Consortium, will help in providing instant analysis of medical screening tests and the early detection of cancer.

Easier to use and faster than the imagers used in current body scanners, and with very large active pixel sensors with an imaging area of approximately 6-cm2, the technology has been specifically developed to meet demanding clinical applications such as X-ray imaging and mammography. This silicon imager is approximately 15 times larger in area than the latest Intel processors.

The next step of the project is to produce wafer-scale imagers that can produce images approaching the width of the human torso. This will eliminate the need for expensive and inefficient lenses and in that way enable lower-cost, more sensitive, and faster medical imaging systems.

Prof. Nigel Allinson, from the University of Sheffield's Vision and Information Engineering Group in the department of electronic and electrical engineering and who led the project, said, "Very large active pixel sensors could soon be making a major impact on medical imaging by further reducing the need for the old technology of film. The UK is a world-lead in such sensors for scientific and medical applications, and this is a lead we intend to maintain.”

Dr. Renato Turchetta, leader of the design team, added, "Wafer-scale CMOS [complementary metal oxide semiconductor] sensors are now a reality and the team is ready to take the digital revolution a step further in order to revolutionize scientific and medical imaging.”

MI-3 is a four-year £4.5 million project funded by the UK Research Council Basic Technology program. The consortium consists of leading groups in detector technology, microelectronics, particle physics, space science, biosciences, and medical physics at universities throughout the United Kingdom.

These sensors were developed by the CMOS Sensor Design Group at STFC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in association with the University of Sheffield and University College London.


Related Links:
University of Sheffield
Science & Technology Facilities Council Rutherford-Appleton Laboratories