Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Heydarreon Welcome
Speaker 1: to Tech Stuff, I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an
Speaker 1: executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the Tech Are You? So?
Speaker 1: Over the holiday weekend on December thirtieth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: I had the occasion to get my very first CT scan.
Speaker 1: This was because I was experiencing a medical emergency. More
Speaker 1: on that later, because it's actually going to impact this
Speaker 1: show a bit, and I'm still struggling under a a
Speaker 1: few nasty effects today, so it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a chore to do this and stay coherent. But this
Speaker 1: is first and foremost a tech podcast, not a Jonathan's
Speaker 1: All Messed Up podcast, and by golly, I owe you
Speaker 1: episode about something technical. So I thought, Hey, I've never
Speaker 1: had a CT scan before. How about I do an
Speaker 1: episode on CT scanners. Now. I have talked a bit
Speaker 1: about related medical technologies on the show, like X ray
Speaker 1: machines and MRI machines, and I've talked about tomography with
Speaker 1: regard to three D printing. That's what the T in
Speaker 1: CT stands for, stands for tomography. The C in case
Speaker 1: you're curious, stands for computed so CT is computed tomography.
Speaker 1: But unless you work with that kind of technology, knowing
Speaker 1: that probably doesn't help you out very much. To understand
Speaker 1: CT scans, we need to have a quick reminder about
Speaker 1: X rays. Now. I've talked a decent amount about X
Speaker 1: rays not that long ago, because I did an episode
Speaker 1: about how in the early twentieth century shoe shops used
Speaker 1: cabinets containing X ray lamps essentially, and then some viewfinders
Speaker 1: that would let customers see their own feet while their
Speaker 1: feet are still inside their shoesies. Well, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of reasons to suspect this was perhaps an unwise marketing campaign.
Speaker 1: After all, it did have the potential to seriously harm
Speaker 1: customers and more likely shoe store staff. The trend actually
Speaker 1: stuck around for an alarmingly long time. Anyway, there's a
Speaker 1: whole episode about this from November. It is titled AI
Speaker 1: and Radioactive Shoes Salesman if you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about that. Also, I don't think I did this on purpose,
Speaker 1: but the episode that published about those shoe salesmen went
Speaker 1: out on November eighth, twenty twenty three, and we traced
Speaker 1: the discovery of X rays back to November eighth, eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety five. So I recorded a podcast about X rays
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty eight years to the day after
Speaker 1: their discovery. I don't remember doing that on purpose, so
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it was just pure luck. We have
Speaker 1: a nineteenth century smarty pants named Wilhelm Conrad Rintgen to
Speaker 1: thank for X rays. Well, not exactly, because X rays
Speaker 1: are a type of electromagnetic radiation and they exist whether
Speaker 1: or not. Rentgen figured it out, and surely someone else
Speaker 1: would have susted out if he hadn't. There were other
Speaker 1: people who were kind of looking around the area at
Speaker 1: the time. But the point is Rentgen did it, and so,
Speaker 1: gosh darn it, he deserves the credit for it. So
Speaker 1: Rentgin was experimenting with what was called a Crook's tube,
Speaker 1: a glass bulb inside which there were a pair of
Speaker 1: electrodes that could be run at high voltage, essentially a
Speaker 1: cathode ray tube, and it also was filled with more
Speaker 1: or less a vacuum. So he had covered up this
Speaker 1: tube with some heavy black cardboard. But then he saw
Speaker 1: that there was a sheet of platino barium in his
Speaker 1: lab that was several feet away, like nine feet away,
Speaker 1: and it was glowing while the tube was active, but
Speaker 1: there was no visible light passing from the tube because
Speaker 1: the cardboard was covering it up. So this got into wondering,
Speaker 1: how could this tube illuminate something if the light was
Speaker 1: being blocked by cardboard. Clearly, some form of energy was
Speaker 1: passing directly through the cardboard as if it weren't there,
Speaker 1: just as visible light can pass through a pane of glass.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long before he found out that this energy
Speaker 1: could pass through human tissue as well. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was the very same day his wife famously held her
Speaker 1: hand up and he was able to take a photograph,
Speaker 1: an X ray photograph of her hand. So if you
Speaker 1: were to hold up your hand between the tube and
Speaker 1: the sheet of platino barium, then you would cast a
Speaker 1: shadow that would show the skeletal structure of your hand,
Speaker 1: and you would have sort of a hazy area that
Speaker 1: would be other tissue in your hand. It didn't take
Speaker 1: long at all before various doctors, engineers, and scientists purposefully
Speaker 1: began to build devices to take X ray images projected
Speaker 1: again onto special film, not necessarily a sheet of platino barium,
Speaker 1: and this would let them get a little and see
Speaker 1: stuff like bones and other kinds of tissue that normally
Speaker 1: you know are on the inside of a person. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, X rays have much shorter wavelengths and
Speaker 1: much higher frequencies than visible light. So if you're looking
Speaker 1: at the electromagnetic spectrum and you go from the types
Speaker 1: of radiation that have the smallest wavelengths and you work
Speaker 1: your way up, it starts at gamma radiation, then X ray,
Speaker 1: then ultraviolet, then visible light, then infrared, then microwave, than
Speaker 1: radio from smallest to longest wavelengths, and X rays are
Speaker 1: a type of ionizing radiation, along with some other forms
Speaker 1: of radiation, like gamma radiation is also ionizing. Alpha and
Speaker 1: beta particles are ionizing. There are a few others. So
Speaker 1: ionizing radiation is radiation that has the energy required to
Speaker 1: strip electrons away from atoms right that can ionize an
Speaker 1: atom by removing electrons. This also can potential damage living cells.
Speaker 1: So most X ray radiation passes through a human body,
Speaker 1: but some of it can end up getting absorbed and
Speaker 1: potentially it can cause harm, potentially serious harm, and this
Speaker 1: potential increases with increased exposure. This is why radiologists set
Speaker 1: up a machine to take X rays and then they
Speaker 1: leave the room before they start snapping photos of your inerts.
Speaker 1: By the way, we can contrast this with non ionizing radiation.
Speaker 1: That is radiation that lacks the energy needed to strip
Speaker 1: electrons away from atoms. So your plain old radio waves,
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff that we use to communicate on
Speaker 1: cell phones and Wi Fi routers and radio and television
Speaker 1: broadcast TV, that's non ionizing radiation. Those big transmitter towers
Speaker 1: might look intimidating, but they do not have the same
Speaker 1: effect as ionizing radiation sources do. So when you hear
Speaker 1: people talk about the potential dangers for things like cell
Speaker 1: phone signals, you do need to know that the energy
Speaker 1: of those signals is orders of magnitude lower than what
Speaker 1: you would find with ionizing radiation like X ray and
Speaker 1: gamma rays. That's not to say that it's a guarantee
Speaker 1: that it's perfectly safe, just that based on that one
Speaker 1: particular vector, you are not seeing an effect. Right. It's
Speaker 1: not like if you sit too close to the TV
Speaker 1: you get cancer or something, at least not directly from
Speaker 1: sitting close to the television. All right, So we have
Speaker 1: the basics with the X ray. You've got a tube
Speaker 1: similar to a cathode ray tube, and it emits X
Speaker 1: rays when you pass a high voltage current through the
Speaker 1: filament inside the tube. It's kind of like a light bulb,
Speaker 1: but instead of giving off visible light or say ultraviolet
Speaker 1: light with a UV light, it gives off X rays.
Speaker 1: So the cathode focuses these X rays so that you
Speaker 1: can actually direct them properly. And then with an X
Speaker 1: ray machine on the opposite side from where the X
Speaker 1: ray tube is, you have a detector. Now, once upon
Speaker 1: a time, the detector was a sheet of film, right
Speaker 1: like it was contained within something else, and you would
Speaker 1: just take a photo and the X rays would go
Speaker 1: through the person and hit the film behind them, and
Speaker 1: then you develop that film and you've got your image
Speaker 1: of the X ray. But now a lot of X
Speaker 1: ray machines have digital detectors. They have a sensor on
Speaker 1: the other side that picks up those X rays, so
Speaker 1: you're not actually capturing stuff to film, you're capturing it digitally.
Speaker 1: And then once that's gone through, once the X rays
Speaker 1: have passed through and they've hit either the film or
Speaker 1: the sensor, then you have a radiologist and doctors who
Speaker 1: can look at and interpret the results. They can look
Speaker 1: at the image and determine what's going on inside. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason that I'm talking about X rays instead of
Speaker 1: CT scanners is that a CT scan is a specialized
Speaker 1: kind of X ray. A CT scanner is an X
Speaker 1: ray machine. Now you've likely seen one of these, either
Speaker 1: in person or in media. Typically it looks like you
Speaker 1: have like a little kind of white wall, like it's
Speaker 1: a machine where part of the machine is a vertical
Speaker 1: barrier kind of like a wall, and the center of
Speaker 1: it is a large hole large enough for a person
Speaker 1: to be passed through the middle of that hole, and
Speaker 1: extending out from it is a motorized bed if you're
Speaker 1: feeling generous. I thought of it just as like a
Speaker 1: table or platform, because there was nothing bed like about it.
Speaker 1: When I was on it. I laid down on this
Speaker 1: platform in my case, and a technician positioned me so
Speaker 1: that my head was at the right spot at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the hole in the center of this vertical barrier.
Speaker 1: So it's like I was slowly being fed into a
Speaker 1: doughnut hole as the process was going on. But this
Speaker 1: hole is a housing for an X ray tube and detector,
Speaker 1: and the reason for its shape. The reason why you
Speaker 1: have this round hole that you're being passed through is
Speaker 1: that the ct scan is taking a series of X
Speaker 1: ray images in a circle around you. It snaps a shot,
Speaker 1: and then the mechanism rotates inside the vertical barrier. It
Speaker 1: snaps another shot, and it does this very very very fast.
Speaker 1: If you could see through the machine, like the machine
Speaker 1: can see through you, you'd see that an X ray
Speaker 1: tube might start at a location such as directly overhead. Right,
Speaker 1: you're looking straight up, you can see the X ray tube,
Speaker 1: and then after it takes a picture, it moves slightly.
Speaker 1: Let's say it moves clockwise from your perspective, and so
Speaker 1: it's moving down the perimeter of the hole. From your perspective.
Speaker 1: You're keeping your eyes straight up, and eventually you would
Speaker 1: see the detector directly above you as it rotated one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty degrees. So it does this a bunch
Speaker 1: of times until it has essentially gone around you, and
Speaker 1: then what results is a series of X ray images
Speaker 1: of part of your body. So in my case, it
Speaker 1: was monogan, and you get it from various angles. The
Speaker 1: CT scan generates a series of two dimensional quote unquote
Speaker 1: slices of whatever it's imaging, and these slices can range
Speaker 1: between one to ten millimeters thick. The actual thickness depends
Speaker 1: upon the specific machine in use. More than that, after
Speaker 1: gathering a full slice image, the machine can move the
Speaker 1: motorized platform forward a bit, a little further into the
Speaker 1: machine and the process can repeat. And this way the
Speaker 1: engineers can collect the number of slices needed for whatever
Speaker 1: is going on, Like if they're trying to image an
Speaker 1: entire organ, then they will keep doing this until they've
Speaker 1: hit all the slices that make up that organ. Now
Speaker 1: the images are pretty darn cool. You can look at
Speaker 1: each slice individually. That's useful if you suspect there could
Speaker 1: be something concerning in there, like a mass that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be there, for example, or you can stack them together
Speaker 1: and then collectively, with these stacked slices, you can create
Speaker 1: a three D image of whatever it was you were scanning.
Speaker 1: So that means there's a hospital here in Atlanta that
Speaker 1: has a three D scan of my brain. And no,
Speaker 1: I didn't think to ask if I could have a copy.
Speaker 1: In fact, I don't. I don't know if I actually
Speaker 1: want to see it. That might freak me out to
Speaker 1: see my own brain. All right. Anyway, now you have
Speaker 1: a basic idea of how a CT scanner works. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. When we come back, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna answer a few other questions relating to CT scanners,
Speaker 1: some interesting facts and trivia. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we talked a bit about computed tomography, But what
Speaker 1: the heck does tomography mean? So tomography is using some
Speaker 1: form of penetrating energy or wave to section a three
Speaker 1: dimensional object, which is pretty much what we talked about
Speaker 1: with the imaging process just now. But there are different
Speaker 1: types of tomography. It's not all X rays. Uh. For example,
Speaker 1: I once recorded an episode about how using a particular
Speaker 1: kind of photosensitive resin and a machine that used tomography,
Speaker 1: you could three D print objects. So in this case,
Speaker 1: it's not about taking photos of a three dimensional object. Rather,
Speaker 1: it's about directing light at precise angles and positions so
Speaker 1: that this photosensitive resin solidifies when the light hits it,
Speaker 1: and you can get a very precise three D printed
Speaker 1: object from this. So a computer controlled light source zapp's
Speaker 1: the resin over and over again, and then you end
Speaker 1: up with a three D printed object. It's pretty darn cool,
Speaker 1: is not like your desktop three D printer type thing.
Speaker 1: There are lots of other applications for tomography as well,
Speaker 1: but I think most folks who have heard the term
Speaker 1: think of the medical device. So who the heck came
Speaker 1: up with this? Well, that credit goes to an engineer
Speaker 1: named Godfrey Houndsfield, and he actually didn't work in medical
Speaker 1: tech at all. Rather, he was employed by Electric and
Speaker 1: Musical Industries aka EMI. You know the record label, the
Speaker 1: same company that produced records for the Beatles, because of
Speaker 1: course that's who did it. But I'm not giving Housefield
Speaker 1: enough credit. It sounds like he was sitting there working
Speaker 1: on like turntables and cassette players. That was not the case.
Speaker 1: Before he worked for EMI. Houndsfield had worked on radar
Speaker 1: technology for the Royal Air Force, and while at EMI,
Speaker 1: he wasn't trying to make sure I want to hold
Speaker 1: your hand played at just the right speed on a turntable.
Speaker 1: He was developing guided weapons systems for EMI. That, my friend,
Speaker 1: is what you call a diversified portfolio. So the story
Speaker 1: goes that back in the nineteen sixties, Houndsfield was on
Speaker 1: vacation when he got into a conversation with the doctor,
Speaker 1: and the doctor explained that it was really hard to
Speaker 1: get a good X ray image of the human brain.
Speaker 1: Images were limited to two dimensions, and often the quality
Speaker 1: was pretty low and grainy. So Houndsfield goes on his
Speaker 1: merry way, but he keeps thinking back to this issue.
Speaker 1: Could there be a way to create a device that
Speaker 1: could produce better X ray images of structures like the brain?
Speaker 1: He essentially identified all the elements that would be needed
Speaker 1: in order to accomplish that goal. There would need to
Speaker 1: be some way to either rotate the patient, which frankly
Speaker 1: didn't seem very practical, or rotate the X ray apparatus,
Speaker 1: which seemed more achievable. There would also have to be
Speaker 1: a computer system programmed to assemble individual images together to
Speaker 1: create a three D image. These were non trivial challenges
Speaker 1: and it took him a long time, working with lots
Speaker 1: of other very smart people to make it happen, but
Speaker 1: he partnered with various neuroexperts. In nineteen seventy one, he
Speaker 1: and his team were able to build and test a
Speaker 1: CT scanner and produce the first CT scans of a
Speaker 1: human brain. Houndsfield actually received a Nobel Prize in Medicine
Speaker 1: for his contributions, and countless people have benefited from the
Speaker 1: technology since its first introduction. A CT scan can help
Speaker 1: doctors identify potential health threats like blood clots and tumors
Speaker 1: if you're scanning the brain. Obviously other stuff too. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's just a quick overview of how CT scans work.
Speaker 1: And I apologize that this is a short episode, but
Speaker 1: I am a bit limited when it comes to researching, writing,
Speaker 1: and recording at the moment. And that brings me to
Speaker 1: why I had to have a CT scan on December thirtieth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. So I've had migraine headaches on and
Speaker 1: off for a few years, but usually I just get
Speaker 1: a couple each year, like maybe like three or four,
Speaker 1: maybe five or six on a really bad year. But
Speaker 1: late last year I started getting them more frequently and
Speaker 1: I was generally feeling pretty bad. And on December thirtieth,
Speaker 1: I was feeling really bad. And normally I would just
Speaker 1: kind of try and sit things out because I'm not
Speaker 1: good about going to the doctor, but something felt so
Speaker 1: wrong that I've changed my mind, so my partner and
Speaker 1: I actually headed off to the urgent care center, so
Speaker 1: they're the urgent care center. They took my blood pressure
Speaker 1: and it was off the charts, not literally, I mean
Speaker 1: literally it was in the neighborhood of two sixty five
Speaker 1: over one thirty. But if you're familiar with blood pressure,
Speaker 1: you know that is crazy high. They urged me that
Speaker 1: I should go to an emergency room. They explained I
Speaker 1: could be at risk of a stroke. So off we
Speaker 1: rushed to the closest hospital and I check in and
Speaker 1: before long I'm brought into the CT scanner room and
Speaker 1: that's where I got my brain's pictured. I also was
Speaker 1: given an EKG for the first time, and if I
Speaker 1: ever were to consider shaving my chest, it would be
Speaker 1: because I'd be told I'd need to do another EKG,
Speaker 1: because y'all you could call me patches. Now, let's put
Speaker 1: it that way. It is not kind to the chest here. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the doctors looked after me. They told me that the
Speaker 1: EKG and the CT scans looked pretty good. There was
Speaker 1: nothing there to be of immediate concern. I was not
Speaker 1: having a stroke, but my high blood pressure is absolutely
Speaker 1: a problem. And they gave me a mic grain cocktail, which,
Speaker 1: despite the name, did not make me feel like I
Speaker 1: was in The Great Gatsby or anything like that, and
Speaker 1: they gave me some meds to bring my blood pressure
Speaker 1: down a bit. Now I'm currently on a blood pressure
Speaker 1: medication while I wait to see my doctor, which I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do in literally a couple of days. My hope
Speaker 1: is that my doctor and I can find a medication
Speaker 1: and a dosage that will help bring my blood pressure
Speaker 1: down to normal levels, because right now, the medication they
Speaker 1: have me on it's still having me deal with abnormal
Speaker 1: levels of blood pressure, and I'm still having really bad
Speaker 1: migrain headaches. I can't even lie down because if I
Speaker 1: put any pressure on my head, if my head hits
Speaker 1: a pillow or anything like that, the pain becomes intolerable.
Speaker 1: It just it adds to the pressure. So I haven't
Speaker 1: really slept much for the last few days. Anyway, this
Speaker 1: isn't a poor Me episode. I'm telling you all this
Speaker 1: for a few reasons. One is that one of the
Speaker 1: many things I need to do in order to deal
Speaker 1: with my blood pressure is I have to adjust my
Speaker 1: stress levels, and to that end, I have arranged to
Speaker 1: reduce my publication schedule for tech stuff a little bit,
Speaker 1: so I had been publishing five times a week seven
Speaker 1: times a week toward the end of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to switch back to three times a week,
Speaker 1: which longtime listeners will know that's what I used to do,
Speaker 1: but I'm going back to that. And my thought is
Speaker 1: that if I can get things in a good rhythm,
Speaker 1: I want to do two standard Tech Stuff episodes and
Speaker 1: then on Fridays maybe do a news round up episode.
Speaker 1: I also still have a ton of classic episode intros
Speaker 1: and outros recorded and ready to go, so my hope
Speaker 1: is to actually reserve those for days when either my
Speaker 1: health isn't cooperating and I simply cannot record, or if
Speaker 1: maybe I'm on vacation or something. So I hope you
Speaker 1: all understand for at least a month or two, we're
Speaker 1: going to have a lighter schedule than normal. And the
Speaker 1: other reason I'm telling you all all this is because
Speaker 1: I'm one of those folks who very reluctantly goes to
Speaker 1: the doctor. I have no good reason for this. I
Speaker 1: got a lot of really bad reasons, but none of
Speaker 1: them are good. They range from en Zo to being
Speaker 1: used to a time when my partner and I could
Speaker 1: not easily make our way to the doctor. So we
Speaker 1: did without. But the point is, I have these resources
Speaker 1: available to me now, and it's dumb for me not
Speaker 1: to take advantage of them. And I realized lots of
Speaker 1: people aren't fortunate to be in a position where they
Speaker 1: can easily seek medical care, and it's insulting that I
Speaker 1: took it for granted when I did so. Had I
Speaker 1: been going to a doctor regularly, I might have caught
Speaker 1: the blood pressure problem ages ago. I could already be
Speaker 1: treating it. Maybe I would have prevented the trip to
Speaker 1: the er, as well as the terrible migraines that I'm
Speaker 1: fighting now. So this is really just me urging all
Speaker 1: of y'all out there. I love you guys. Okay, if
Speaker 1: you have access to doctors but you're not really taking
Speaker 1: advantage of it, please consider getting out of that rut.
Speaker 1: I know it's hard because I've been there. I was
Speaker 1: in that same rut for years and it was actually
Speaker 1: a matter of great shame to me. It was hard
Speaker 1: to even think about. I knew rationally that I needed
Speaker 1: to be going to a doctor, and yet I wasn't
Speaker 1: doing it. And so I'm paying for that now. And
Speaker 1: I realize that not everyone has that kind of access,
Speaker 1: and that stinks. I'm fully in support of making healthcare
Speaker 1: accessible and affordable to everyone. It's not just the right
Speaker 1: thing to do for the individual person, it also ends
Speaker 1: up being right for society. Because healthy people are more productive,
Speaker 1: then they place less of a demand on society's resources.
Speaker 1: So healthcare is an investment that actually does pay off
Speaker 1: for everybody, not just the patient. But enough of my soapboxing,
Speaker 1: so there may be some inconsistency with publication in the
Speaker 1: near future. My plan is to publish on Mondays, Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: and Fridays, but there may be days where I slip earlier. Today,
Speaker 1: for example, I couldn't even imagine sitting at my desk
Speaker 1: and writing or recording this episode. I was in way
Speaker 1: too much pain. But my hope is that once my
Speaker 1: doctor and I dial in the meds I need, and
Speaker 1: I start making some lifestyle changes that help support those meds,
Speaker 1: I'll be back to normal, or as close to normal
Speaker 1: as I get anyway. In the meantime, thank you all
Speaker 1: so much for listening. I hope you have an amazing
Speaker 1: new year, and I promise that I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Tech stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.