Building a DIY CT/CAT scanner for $200 [video] | Hacker News Reader

Building a DIY CT/CAT scanner for $200 [video]

youtube.com

118 pointswalterbell14 comments

From YT comments:

  … this kid appears to know what he’s doing.  He even built a fairly outrageous DC power supply specifically for this project.  

  … It was smart to use the remote control to keep away from the X-rays! … hence, why he was across the yard … Protip man, build a little lead or steel vault for that thing to protect yourself AND remove background radiation that is noising up your image. Then get yourself a survey meter and make sure you are keeping exposure outside the vault to 5mr/Hr or less.

  … Excellent work young man.  When I read the title of your video, I thought perhaps you misunderstood the complex nature of the reconstruction algorithm.  Turns out I was the one trying to keep up with your explanations and logic.  

  … I fix CT scanners for a living.  This is pretty darn cool!!  When you started out, I was trying to figure out how you were going to make all of that rotate around your “patient.”  You simply rotated your “patient” itself.  Well done!  

  … While not medical grade, it still demonstrates the working principle and actually extremely useful for imaging internal structures of all sorts of things!

Consumer electronics imaged by industrial CT scanner: https://www.lumafield.com/article/inspect-electronics-indust...

Precursor videos:

Building an X-Ray power supply, https://youtube.com/watch?v=ppIhQ0ZldZ0

Turning TV parts into an X-ray machine, https://youtube.com/watch?v=LXnK_lMQbYc

Building an X-Ray machine in my backyard, https://youtube.com/watch?v=oxfPK6PlyRY

>I fix CT scanners for a living. This is pretty darn cool!! When you started out, I was trying to figure out how you were going to make all of that rotate around your “patient.” You simply rotated your “patient” itself. Well done!

It's worth noting that this is in fact the approach for most industrial CT scanners, which are perfectly capable of punching through perhaps half an inch of steel in my experience (not a CT tech, just an engineer that has used them - there might be more powerful ones out there). It's usually just a small turntable. Conveniently, the object to be imaged usually doesn't care too much about the radiation when it's made of metal.

I was planning to build something similar with a higher budget for a Spellman HVPS, a shielded Oxford Xray tube, and a CMOS flat panel detector.

However, I learned the potential law consequence of irradiating my neighbors if they found out and that the Xray from the planned 1mA, 50kVp system cannot be shielded to an absolutely safe value easily. I decided to put the plan on a indefinite hold.

Reminds when William Osman hacked a dentist's X-ray source

https://youtu.be/IiJAq53knwc

The vitriol he received from that video basically drove his main channel into hibernation.

I know :( We're poorer everyday for it.

Ben from Applied Science did this 11 years ago too: https://youtu.be/hF3V-GHiJ78?si=I6xH7WrrqVaDK-Hv

This strikes me as a way to give yourself cancer, no?

Only in California

That sound like a lot fun. Working on similar recently, I've learned the basics are almost trivial with the information and technology that is now widely availablr, and this really demonstrates that.

Pretty cool, although it seems like he is blasting his phone with x-rays? I am guessing that thin phosphorescent screen isn't blocking much.

As long as it works, it works. Interestingly the phone doesn't glitch. I wonder how many x-ray equivalent doses the lighter, the guy and his phone have picked up by now.

This is probably safe if you do it once but I'd definitely not do this regularly.

I'm now remembering The Knick when that guy gets cancer from his obsession with the x-ray machine.

Sadly this would be illegal in Australia.

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