plates

From a small filling in a tooth to a large plate inserted to mend a broken bone, millions of us have metal implants of some kind. The bad news is that they get in the way when it comes to using modern scanning techniques, disrupting the X-ray beams and making the normally detailed 3-D images from a CT scanner unclear, subsequently hindering diagnosis. But a breakthrough by a team of researchers in Oxford promises to make scans crystal clear, marking a huge leap forward in ending the problem of blurred scan images.