ct-big new excitement in health care general electric has leapfrogged into leadership in the un * 88269 lice 1 ray 125 28 hay 76 cnt agt no the two images at left explain why a new medical device from general electric is stirring fresh excite ment and hope in the medical pro fession near left is a conventional x-ray faintly demonstrating a mass in the chest region what it doesn't show is whether this mass is a tumor or a cyst and its exact posi tion within the body by contrast the picture oppo site shows that the mass is in fact a fluid-filled cyst attached directly to the spine this previously unavailable diagnostic visualization is supplied by newly-developed ge medical equipment called the computer ized tomographic total body system ( ct/t ) . aided by images provided by the general electric unit doctors were able to surgically remove the cyst computerized tomography or ct is the visual reconstruction by computer of what is called a tomographic plane of an object it's like taking a horizontal slice out of the trunk of a tree without cutting it down in medical appli cations ct displays an approxi mately one-centimeter-thick slice of some part of the human body ct images are also distin guished by their sensitivity in recording very small variations in tissue density this sensitivity is what permits the physician to dis tinguish fat from muscle healthy tissue from diseased and in some cases even benign from malignant tumors actually the ct image does not like pictures transmitted from space satellites it is reconstructed by the computer from thousands absorption made in many direc tions through the desired slice to obtain a ct image the x-ray tube and over 300 minute x-ray detectors are rotated completely around the subject obtaining ab angles advanced electronic tech niques are used to read this huge volume of data and to construct the image the doctor sees ct scanners have been on th market for some time — in fact head scanners first appeared in 1 973 the big news about gene electric's new ct/t scanner is that it has leapfrogged previous technology by taking its pictui never since the discovery of x-rays has there been so much progress in such little i time says a west coast physician experienced in using computerized tomography rently and in ct imagery as in pho tography speed can be a critical factor earlier units required ex posure times up to five minutes this was acceptable for head scans but for body scans the motions of breathing caused a fuzzy image general electric's ct/t sys at uc medical center doctors use tern however can do its 360 ct cross-sectional views of the body scan in as little as 4.8 seconds for diagnosis short enough for even very ill or very young patients to hold still the result is exceptional image sharpness — the kind that can pin point problem areas and the images are achieved with less radiation to the patient per scan plus fewer retakes in order to get motion-free images what difference does this make to the physician body scanning technology revolutionizes radi ology says dr alexander margulis of the university of california medical center in san francisco where the initial ct/t unit has been installed you in crease the ability to diagnose tumors abscesses congenital abnormalities and many other conditions which could not be seen before ct scanning has tre mendously improved our ability to