Why are these realtime high resolution colorful super X-Rays from the airport not used for medical X-Raying?
In: Technology
For many things that have to be more precise than X-Rays, there’s MRI and CT scanners, which deliver precise 3D images of the selected area, and are even used for brain surgery. They are very expensive to use though, so lots of things are still made with X-Rays.
X-rays at the airport are trying to look through your clothes. They are not trying to go deep into the skin.
X-rays at a hospital have to be able to go through the skin to see what’s underneath, often with some level of adjustable “depth”.
The airport xray wants to figure out the difference between metal and human organic stuff, which is like walking through a door. The hospital one has to find the difference between organic matter and organic matter inside the human, which is like a double reverse backflip through a door.
(X-Ray contrast comes from the density difference of stuff, organic-metal: easy, organic-organic: though)
Fact: Breast cancer is the hardest cancer “to see”, because the fat looks pretty much like cancer tissue with all diagnostics, so sciency texts will benchmark their tools with that type of cancer. My professor once told me a story of how they tried to bring a breast cancer sample from the US to our country and the airline wasnt happy about it all haha
There are no “high resolution super x rays” at the airports. They are very low resolution x ray machines and the color you are seeing is for “post processing”. It separates organic and inorganic material in different colors to tell the difference. High resolution machines are not Xray machines but CT machines that allow a 3D image of the item to appear. They are very new technology and govt agencies such as TSA are just starting to depoly them across the US. They are two very different technologies and require different training.
Medical X-Rays are stronger and are designed to see through the body like u/Xelopheris says. Airport xrays are designed to look for weapon or bomb components.
Xray tech here. Airport scanners are very weak xray beams that do not penetrate enough to see anything in great detail. Medical xrays use a stronger beam to produce higher resolution images. Basically we shoot xrays at you and whatever is not absorbed by your body is what you see on the image. The strength of the xray beam depends on the part of your body we’re looking at. My job is to decide how strong to make the beam and for how many milliseconds to expose you.
Latest Answers