Democra Ct™: A Significantly Affordable CT Scanner Capable of High Resolution Imaging

Student: Nick Machesney, 2014-2015

Sponsor: Prof. Matthew Leevy, Biological Sciences, Notre Dame, IN

CT-scanners for pre-clinical research are prohibitively expensive, yet necessary to provide an “overall picture” of the subject matter. Planar x-ray machines are cheaper and can actually take higher quality projections than a CT-scanner, however they don’t provide the comprehensive perspective that CT-scanners do. The goal of this project is to finish creating and then commercialize an additional piece of rotating hardware for the planar x-ray machine that will allow it to perform like a CT-scanner. The cost-saving benefits of this hardware would be enormous and allow for labs with less funding (i.e. those in developing countries) to not have their research limited by lack of technology. Plus, with the higher imaging capabilities of a planar x-ray machine, the final reconstruction obtained from it should be higher resolution than that obtained from a CT- scanner, allowing for better understanding of the data.