Healthcare Sector
Lisbon, Portugal, 2012-Jan-19
Mummies dating back hundreds of years are not the most frequently examined patients, but they can enable us to look back into the past. The high-resolution images delivered by a computer tomograph (CT), for example, supply information about the illnesses prevalent in antiquity. During the most recent investigations, performed on a mummy in Portugal, medical experts and researchers were able to establish the presence of a tumor, indicating that the man apparently died of prostate cancer more than 2000 years ago.
This diagnosis emerged after experts working on the Lisbon Mummy Project examined an embalmed corpse from the era of Ptolemy, around 305 BC, using a computer tomograph. The researchers did not even need to remove the bandages from the preserved body, being able to 'unwrap' the mummy virtually via the computer, without touching or damaging it in any way.
A prostate cancer, with bone extensions, was diagnosed in an Egyptian mummy with more then 2000 years old. This unique finding is part of an investigation project that took place in Portugal, named Lisbon Mummy Project. The tomography exams, made with Siemens equipments, allowed the investigating team to reconstruct the entire mummified body in 3D, and to find the first case of prostate cancer detected in an Egyptian mummy, still in its original bands, without the usage of destructive methods.
Using images generated by a portable computed tomography (CT) system, experts in Egypt have examined the cause of King Tutankhamen’s death some 3,000 years ago. The CT scan of the Pharaoh’s mummy did not find evidence that Tutankhamen was murdered.
German Researchers Using a SOMATOM Sensation 64 Computed Tomography Scanner wanted to document the structure within the bust. Prof. Wildung, director of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, and Alexander Huppertz, MD, head of the Imaging Science Institute in Berlin, as well as the National Geographic team, were able to X-ray the bust without damaging it.
Atherosclerosis, more commonly known as arterial clogging, is the most widespread disease in most nations of the world. Through the use of a SOMATOM Emotion 6 computed tomography (CT) scanner from Siemens Healthcare, experts discovered the atherosclerosis in Egyptian mummies as old as 3,500 years.
A historical mummy was the object of an endurance test which Siemens underwent in cooperation with a team of researchers from the University of Zurich to answer the question: Can the new software for magnetic resonance tomographs (MR) provide insight into the anatomy and disease characteristics of the human being, even for those parts of the human body which, even more so for a mummy, contain almost no water?
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History has pioneered the use of CT scanning technology in non-invasive scientific research. Now, with the gift of a Siemens SOMATOM Emotion 6 CT scanner from Siemens Healthcare, Smithsonian researchers are acquiring information about museum objects that is fundamentally changing the way scientists examine specimens.
2012-01-19