Discuss the generations of CT scan.

First generation
The first-generation CT scanner is a rotate and translate, pencil beam system. It had two x ray
detectors and it used parallel ray geometry thus one x ray source to one detector. The x ray
source and detector moved together to collect data. In order to construct one slice, the x-ray
source would have to translate many times for each view then the source and tube were
rotated with respect to the patient. The patient was surrounded by water bath due to the
increase in the x- ray flux and it minimized the x-ray signal dynamic range; reduced beam
hardening variation and provide a water reference for CT number accuracy. It also provides a
uniform water attenuation throughout the scanned field of view and hence the system had an
overall advantage of efficient scatter reduction.
However, this process was very time consuming from the single source to single detector
imaging to the reconstruction which was being performed by mini-computers.
Second generation
The second generation of CT scan was a refinement of the translate rotate scanners but still
using the same general concepts. When clinical power of CT became evident, demand
increased as did efforts to improve technology. The CT1010 head scanner was introduced,
which replaced the water bag with carbon pre-patient attenuator. The scanner used a translate-
rotate geometry with the capability to calibrate the detectors spanning 3 degrees. This
allowed a 3-degree rotation increment and needing only 60 translations thus reducing the
scan time to 1 minute. linear array of 30 detectors was used to acquire more data and increase
the image quality.by adding detectors angularly displaced, several projections could be
obtained in a single translation.
Although the second-generation scanners had a major up step in reducing time being 15 times
faster, the main worry was of increased scatter radiation. Most of the detectors were
constructed of Sodium iodide which would result in after glow. Further speed improvements
were limited by the mechanical complexity of the rotate-translate geometry
Third generation
This generation is a rotate-to-rotate system with wide beam geometry. The number of
detectors increased substantially to more than 800 from originally 288 during the third
generation, this increased the spatial resolution, and the angle of fan beam increased to cover
the entire patient. It had a slip-ring that supported continuous gantry rotation. The fan beam
body scanner designed with a 5 second scan time, filtered backprojection reconstruction by
rebinning to parallel rays, a pre-patient attenuator to reduce dynamic range and beam
hardening artifacts. By the beginning of the second half of the 1970s the 3rd generation
became the most popular design for fast body scanning. The gantry with a wide opening and
a rather small diameter slip ring required the system to have a tunnel into which the patient
was placed.
While the 3rd generation offered many advantages it also presented challenges, mainly the
tendency to produce ring artifacts from errors in detectors constructively producing a full or
partial ring linearity. The system was more sensitive to aliasing than the former two
generations. Significant amount of useless data is always collected when scanning smaller
objects.
Fourth generation
The 4th CT scanners were designed to overcome the problem of ring artifacts; this was
through the introduction of the rotate/fixed system (the detector completely surrounded the
patient and the detectors do not move because detectors are fixed). Earlier versions had 600
detectors while had up to 4 800 detectors. This design was incorporated with the x ray tube
inside the array of detectors, the original design was quite large but later designs moved tube
outside the ring and tilted ring out of way of the x-ray beam as x-ray swept by. Each detector
could be calibrated at the beginning or end of each inverse fan view completely avoiding the
ring artifacts. In contrast to the 3rd generation CT, in the 4th generation design the number of
views is limited by the number of detectors but the number of rays in each inverse fan is
flexibly controlled, an advantage for achieving high spatial resolution, this was
approximately 100-fold increase in resolution. Scanning time was reduced to as low as 1s for
a 360-degree rotation.
The 4th generation scanners are also coupled with challenges. The x ray tube being too close
to the patient results in higher skin dosage using the inverse square law. The major limitation
was of less efficient use of detectors, less than a quarter are used at any point during
scanning..
After the fourth generation, CT technology remained stable until 1987. By then, CT
examination times were dominated by inter-scan delays. Scanning was done in forward,
braking and reverse mechanism which required at least 8-10 seconds of which only 2 seconds
were spent in data acquisition. This resulted in poor temporal resolution for dynamic contrast
enhancement studies. This resulted to the evolution of the fifth generation.
Fifth generation, Electron beam computed tomography
The fifth generation used the stationary to stationary mechanism hence no moving parts to the
scanner gantry and it was specifically designed for cardiac tomography imaging. No
conventional x ray tube is used but instead a large arc tungsten encircles the patient (anode)
and lies directly opposite to the detector ring. It uses an electronic gun that deflects and
focuses a fast moving electron beam along tungsten ring in the gantry. The images are
obtained in 50ms times and can produce fast frame rate CT movies of the beating heart such
that the whole heart can be acquired in 0.2 seconds. The machine offered unprecedented
temporal resolution, better spatial resolution (with the final blow being ECG-gated scanning)
and required no motion at all to produce a set of parallel slices..
Amongst the disadvantages of these scanners is higher noise levels and lower special
resolution. This generation was very expensive and not very volatile.
Although still available 5th generation scanners EBCT are limited to cardiac screening, mostly
because the image quality for general scanning is lower than that of conventional CT and
because of higher equipment costs. With innovation being made in cardiac scanning by multi-
slice CT, the future of EBCT is uncertain.
Sixth generation CT, Helical scanners
In all previous generations, gantry needs to be stopped to change angle projections, so image
acquisition is not continuous process and likewise for image acquisition, it is crucial that
energy be constantly supplied to the x ray tube and detectors. Helical scanners overcome this
with the use of slip rings. Patient is moved through rotating x ray beam and detector set. The
setup is similar to the 4th generation scanners, a slip ring then passes electrical power to the
rotating components without fixed connections, allowing continuous rotation to occur. This
allows complete elimination of inters can delays except for the time required to move the
table to the next slice position.
The major limitation is that as image is produced in helical form, no full slices of data are
available although this can be compensated through the reconstruction process. As the
acquisition included data interpolation between slices this creates a higher chance of error
and data misrepresentation.
The seventh generation

Conclusion
CT technology has progressed immensely over the past four decades. Seven major
generations of CT scanners have been introduced so far, each finding was to improve not only
the speed of image acquisition and reconstruction but image quality as well.