MovieChat Forums > CSI: NY (2004) Discussion > Holographic CAT scanner?

Holographic CAT scanner?

posted 11 years ago by OldGeezer916
1 reply | jump to latest

Forgive me if this has been asked before. I went back as far as I could to check the topics. The last question I asked about another series had been covered years earlier and some troll attacked me repeatedly because apparently I'm an idiot!!
Can that holograph scanner they started showing late in season 4 be for real? I'm watching Season 5 episode 2 and it is projecting in the whole room around Mac and Sheldon and they are inside the victims stomach. Really?? They claim that the technology used in the show is real except for shortening the time for tests that can take days to a matter of seconds. For the sake of the story I suppose that is necessary, but I'm having trouble buying this one. Can someone in the medical field correct me if I'm wrong?
I have seen enough episodes of Forensic Files to know that some things in the show are a bit of a stretch. Like the fancy graphics when checking fingerprints and the computer slides the print over and superimposes it on top of the other and starts flashing MATCH. Truth is the fingerprint database usually turns up a number of possibilities and they all have to be checked manually by an expert. I can forgive dramatizations like that but the scanner has to be complete science fiction.

[–] Simon-140 11 years ago

They're certainly being used for some applications, such as orthopaedic surgery:
http://bit.ly/1d6R7HV
http://bit.ly/1mUFPw8

The technology isn't especially tricky. CAT output images are already in digital format, so it shouldn't be that hard to take several CAT scans, from varying angles, and form a 3D computer representation of a body, which could be displayed as a hologram.

I suspect the biggest problem would be limiting the patient's radiation exposure to safe levels. Normal CAT scans expose patients to a lot of radiation, so the radiation dose from the multiple CAT scans needed to create a 3D model (such as a hologram) may well be unacceptable. (Of course, for virtual autopsies, this isn't a problem.)