Elias Konstantopoulos gets spotty glimpses of the world each day for about four hours, or for however long he leaves his Argus II retina prosthesis turned on. The 74-year-old Maryland resident lost his sight from a progressive retinal disease over 30 years ago, but is able to perceive some things when he turns on the bionic vision system.
New dual-energy spectral imaging technology represents a new standard of visualization that helps address two main computed tomography (CT) clinical imaging challenges: material separation and artifact reduction.
GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK) presented the increased clinical adoption and emergence as a “must have” tool of its Gemstone spectral imaging (GSI) computed tomography (CT) application at the 2011 International Symposium on Multidetector Row CT, held in San Francisco, CA, USA, in June 2011.
GE Healthcare’s second release of GSI technology now includes refinements in image quality and usability. This second release is being provided to all current GE Discovery CT750 HD systems with GSI worldwide to help clinicians make well-informed, patient-focused decisions.
Neuroscientists at the Mayo Clinic campus in Jacksonville, Fla., have demonstrated how brain waves can be used to type alphanumerical characters on a computer screen. By merely focusing on the “q” in a matrix of letters, for example, that “q” appears 
on the monitor.
Researchers say these findings, presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society, represent concrete progress toward a mind-machine interface that may, one day, help people with a variety of disorders control devices, such as prosthetic arms and legs. These disorders include Lou Gehrig’s disease and spinal cord injuries, among many others.