How does a CT Scanner work?
In: Engineering
You basically take a lot of 2D X-Ray images of you or an object at various angles. That is why a CT scanner turns around you or in the case of some scientific equipment, it rotates an object instead.
Then through the magic of mathematics that are way beyond me, you take those 2D images and reconstruct a 3D image from them.
Objects with different densities affect X-Rays, so you can take that 3D image and see areas of different densities. A trained professional runs that through specialized software to mark those areas and depending on what shows up and how, you can tell if there is something wrong.
Note that not everything shows up on X-Rays and that is why you can use the reconstruction math for 2D images with other techniques like PET scans and MRI scans.
Technically CT stands for Computed Tomography which is the math used to do the 3D image reconstruction.
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