The area of interest (in this case, the head) is placed in the gantry. The horse has been sedated and positioned on a moveable platform.Computed Tomography (CT)
Our state of the art computed tomography (CT) suite has positioned Rossdales as one of very few veterinary hospitals in the world equipped to perform CT imaging (commonly referred to as CT scans) on horses.
This highly sophisticated facility allows us to provide the highest quality imaging available and to interpret conditions of the skull, nasal passages, sinus cavities and cervical vertebrae of adult horses, as well as for dental problems. Using this equipment, we are also able to undertake full body evaluation of young foals.
CT technology uses very small x-ray beams from many different angles around the body (called a slice) that are transmitted to a computer programme which produces an image of the highest quality. The tissue images show up on the computer screen as black, white and shades of grey (called the grey scale). The amount of grey shown indicates the ability of different tissues to absorb the x-ray beam, helping to identify normal and abnormal tissue. The image below is a CT scan of a head, showing orbits and turbinates.
Our third generation multi-slice CT scanner comprises four x-ray tube heads which revolve around the area of interest, which is placed inside the gantry. Four 1mm thick images (slices) are generated for every revolution of the gantry. When scanning for dental problems, this allows the entire dental arcade to be imaged in around 40 seconds.
Images are processed initially at a dedicated workstation before being uploaded to our networked computer servers, from which they can be viewed anywhere in the practice via our specialist software. Images can be manipulated to render 3-dimensional reconstructions from 2-dimensional slices, producing not only exceptional images, but opening up whole new areas of diagnosis and treatment.
