Counting photons from particle to medical physics

2009 AIP Industrial Physics Forum : Developments from CERN could make CT scanners even better at detecting early cancer cells or other disease indicators.The particle physics research laboratory’s work to create photon counters that can count ten million photons per second—up by a factor of one hundred from previous generation counters— have been integrated into CT systems and had their first trial run with patients. There are more developments that will have to take place before the photon-counters can fullfill their full potential, but early work presented at the recent AAPM meeting looks promising.While CERN made the progress in photon counter technology , it has been representatives from industry who put them together with CT scanners. At the AIP and AAPM meeting , Reuven Levinson, a Technology Development Leader at GE Healthcare in the CT Engineering group in Haifa, Israel, announced the first use of a photon counting CT system on human patients. The CT’s X-ray detector counts the individual photons and measures their energy. Levinson and his team built the photon counting CT system and had it installed last year at the Rabin Medical Center in Tel Aviv, Israel.