face-up, and secured it by buckling the straps.
“OK, then. You’re a smart one.”
Opaline pushed a button to move the couch up, then forward and backward inside the hole. When the baby was properly positioned, she stepped sideways and slapped the donut.
“The scanner itself is this circular rotating frame. It’s got an X-ray tube on one side and a detector on the other that looks kind of like a banana. The rotating frame will spin the X-ray tube anddetector around our poor little fella here, creating a fan-shaped beam of X-rays. The detector will take snapshots called profiles. Typically, about a thousand each time around. So with each complete rotation, we’ll get one cross-sectional slice.”
Opaline’s tone had become a little less kindergarten-teacher sweet.
“The computer will use digital geometry processing to generate three-dimensional images of the inside of the body from the series of two-dimensional images taken around our single axis of rotation. Get it?”
“I do. Thank you.”
“You ready?”
I nodded.
“Let’s do it.”
* * *
Forty-three minutes later, we were all in the anteroom with Mrs. Tong seated at the workstation, the rest of us bunched around her. While entering instructions, she’d explained how the data produced by the scanner would be manipulated through a process known as windowing to demonstrate various bodily structures based on their ability to block the X-ray beam. She said that although images generated were historically in the axial or transverse plane, orthogonal to the long axis of the body, modern scanners now allowed data to be reformatted in various planes or even as volumetric—three-dimensional—representations.
First we’d viewed two-dimensional images produced, according to Mrs. Tong, by MPR, or multiplanar reconstruction. Slice by slice, we’d moved from the window-seat baby’s head to its toes, interpreting pictures that resembled abstracts by Miró.
We’d noted that the skull was deformed due to collapse of both parietal bones. We’d seen that the auditory canals were well defined, that the tiny ossicles—the maleus, incus, and stapes—were present in the middle ear. Leclerc had pointed out the cochlea and vestibule of the inner ear, the labyrinthine segment of the facial nerve canal, the pyramidal process, and other anatomical features.
I’d measured the pars squama and the pars basilaris of the occipital bone and the lengths of the femoral and tibial shafts.
We’d all agreed. The fetus was full-term.
“Switch to three-dimensional?” Mrs. Tong asked.
“Yes,” Leclerc said.
“These images will be produced using the volume-rendering technique and maximum-intensity mode,” Mrs. Tong said.
No abstracts now. The baby appeared in detailed shades of gray and white, angled down, tiny limbs V’ed inward like two sets of wings.
Leclerc used a finger to point out the obvious. “Remnants of the cerebral hemispheres, cerebellum, pons, medulla oblongata, spinal cord.” His finger moved from the skull to the thorax. “Esophagus, trachea, lungs. This is the heart, though I can’t make out the separate cardiac chambers.” He indicated the abdomen. “There’s the stomach, the liver. The rest of the organs are unrecognizable.”
“Is that a penis?” Pomier’s voice sounded husky.
“It is.”
“I see no skeletal malformations or trauma,” I said.
Leclerc and LaManche agreed, then exchanged comments about a few anatomical landmarks.
I didn’t really hear. My attention had shifted to an area of radio opacity in the trachea, partly obscured by superimposition of the tiny jaw.
“What the flip is that?”
L AMANCHE NODDED AS THOUGH I’D ANSWERED A QUESTION , not asked one. Obviously, he saw it, too.
“I noticed that earlier, thought the cloudiness was an artifact,” Leclerc said. “Now I’m not so sure.”
“Is there any way to visualize the area more clearly?” I asked.
Mrs. Tong went back to 2-D, and we viewed the
“OK, then. You’re a smart one.”
Opaline pushed a button to move the couch up, then forward and backward inside the hole. When the baby was properly positioned, she stepped sideways and slapped the donut.
“The scanner itself is this circular rotating frame. It’s got an X-ray tube on one side and a detector on the other that looks kind of like a banana. The rotating frame will spin the X-ray tube anddetector around our poor little fella here, creating a fan-shaped beam of X-rays. The detector will take snapshots called profiles. Typically, about a thousand each time around. So with each complete rotation, we’ll get one cross-sectional slice.”
Opaline’s tone had become a little less kindergarten-teacher sweet.
“The computer will use digital geometry processing to generate three-dimensional images of the inside of the body from the series of two-dimensional images taken around our single axis of rotation. Get it?”
“I do. Thank you.”
“You ready?”
I nodded.
“Let’s do it.”
* * *
Forty-three minutes later, we were all in the anteroom with Mrs. Tong seated at the workstation, the rest of us bunched around her. While entering instructions, she’d explained how the data produced by the scanner would be manipulated through a process known as windowing to demonstrate various bodily structures based on their ability to block the X-ray beam. She said that although images generated were historically in the axial or transverse plane, orthogonal to the long axis of the body, modern scanners now allowed data to be reformatted in various planes or even as volumetric—three-dimensional—representations.
First we’d viewed two-dimensional images produced, according to Mrs. Tong, by MPR, or multiplanar reconstruction. Slice by slice, we’d moved from the window-seat baby’s head to its toes, interpreting pictures that resembled abstracts by Miró.
We’d noted that the skull was deformed due to collapse of both parietal bones. We’d seen that the auditory canals were well defined, that the tiny ossicles—the maleus, incus, and stapes—were present in the middle ear. Leclerc had pointed out the cochlea and vestibule of the inner ear, the labyrinthine segment of the facial nerve canal, the pyramidal process, and other anatomical features.
I’d measured the pars squama and the pars basilaris of the occipital bone and the lengths of the femoral and tibial shafts.
We’d all agreed. The fetus was full-term.
“Switch to three-dimensional?” Mrs. Tong asked.
“Yes,” Leclerc said.
“These images will be produced using the volume-rendering technique and maximum-intensity mode,” Mrs. Tong said.
No abstracts now. The baby appeared in detailed shades of gray and white, angled down, tiny limbs V’ed inward like two sets of wings.
Leclerc used a finger to point out the obvious. “Remnants of the cerebral hemispheres, cerebellum, pons, medulla oblongata, spinal cord.” His finger moved from the skull to the thorax. “Esophagus, trachea, lungs. This is the heart, though I can’t make out the separate cardiac chambers.” He indicated the abdomen. “There’s the stomach, the liver. The rest of the organs are unrecognizable.”
“Is that a penis?” Pomier’s voice sounded husky.
“It is.”
“I see no skeletal malformations or trauma,” I said.
Leclerc and LaManche agreed, then exchanged comments about a few anatomical landmarks.
I didn’t really hear. My attention had shifted to an area of radio opacity in the trachea, partly obscured by superimposition of the tiny jaw.
“What the flip is that?”
L AMANCHE NODDED AS THOUGH I’D ANSWERED A QUESTION , not asked one. Obviously, he saw it, too.
“I noticed that earlier, thought the cloudiness was an artifact,” Leclerc said. “Now I’m not so sure.”
“Is there any way to visualize the area more clearly?” I asked.
Mrs. Tong went back to 2-D, and we viewed the
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