Photon counting CT scanner update

In July of 2014, Mayo Clinic installed the first whole body CT scanner that uses photon-counting detector technology. The Siemens CounT, a hybrid system based on Siemen’s Definition Flash, has one traditional (energy integrating) detector array, which is coupled to the “A” tube. The commercial detector on the “B” system was replaced with the new photon counting detector array. The device is for research use only and is not expected to be commercialized. We are using it as part of 2 NIH funded grants: EB016966 and DK100227.

In the summer of 2015, we scanned the first patients imaged on this device. The specific research study sought to compare the diagnostic image quality and spectral performance of the system to a commercial Flash system. Enrollment in the study (30 patients) is complete and the manuscript in preparation. For more information, you can refer to our published and in press articles, as well as our conference proceedings.

1. Gutjahr R, Halaweish AF, Yu Z, Leng S, Yu L, Li Z, Jorgensen SM, Ritman EL, Kappler S, McCollough CH. Human imaging with photon-counting-based CT at clinical dose levels: Contrast-to-noise ratio and cadaver studies. Invest Radiol. 2016;In Press.
2. Yu Z, Leng S, Jorgensen SM, Li Z, Gutjahr R, Chen B, Halaweish AF, Kappler S, Yu L, Ritman EL, McCollough CH. Performance Evaluation of a Prototype Whole-body Photon-counting Computed Tomography System. Phys Med Biol. 2016;61(4):1572-1595.
3. Yu Z, Leng S, Li Z, Halaweish AF, Kappler S, Ritman EL, McCollough CH. How Low Can We Go in Radiation Dose for the Data-completion Scan on a Research Whole-body Photon-counting CT System. J Comput Assist Tomogr. 2016;In Press.