computed tomography (CT)Article Free Pass computed tomography
(CT), also called computerized tomographic imaging or
computerized axial tomography (CAT), diagnostic imaging method
using a low-dose beam of X-rays that crosses the body in a
single plane at many different angles. CT was conceived by
William Oldendorf and developed independently by Godfrey Newbold
Hounsfield and Allan MacLeod Cormack, who shared a 1979 Nobel
Prize for their inventions. A major advance in imaging
technology, it became generally available in the early 1970s.
The technique uses a tiny X-ray beam that traverses the body in
an axial plane. Detectors record the strength of the exiting
X-rays, and that information is then processed by computer to
produce a detailed two-dimensional cross-sectional image of the
body. A series of such images in parallel planes or around an
axis can show the location of abnormalities and other space-
occupying lesions (especially tumours and other masses) more
precisely than can conventional X-ray images. Wha