Yeah, I was reading about the changes in CAT scan machines as part of my “research” (I know, I know…I’m weird). Its interesting to me that in the the early ones, in the 80s I guess, the scanner armature or gantry couldn’t spin more than one full revolution because of the wiring. So they’d spin one revolution, step the the bed back and reverse the spin to untangle the wires, spin another revolution…. Then someone came up with a way to mount the wiring on a contact plate so that the gantry could spin continuously- that’s where “helical” scans came in, but I guess that wasn’t until the late 80’s or early 90s. For some reason, the idea that the wiring was more of a challenge than the scanning itself strikes me as somewhat funny.

And you are right- the bed I was on wasn’t too bad to lie on. The only challenge for me was holding my breath- my lungs are just a bit too congested I guess. I “sipped” a tiny bit of breath during the scan, and since she only had to do it once I assume it didn’t cause any problems.

One thing that bugs me is that I don’t get to see the images. I was reading the GE Healthcare product site (http://www.gehealthcare.com/usen/ct/products/hiproducts.html) and some of the images it can output…I think it would be cool to be able to look at pictures of my own spine. And look at the blurb in the middle of this page: DVD interchange, JPG files and AVI movie output, USB FLASH drive support…heck, it supports all of that stuff. And yet doctors hide any diagnostic images from patients like its some sort of great secret. I don’t understand why…