Computed Tomography Public Engagement
The Tomography & Imaging and Mantid Imaging teams at STFC worked together to produce three interactive activities demonstrating Computed Tomography as a non-destructive imaging technique.
The activities were developed for Harwell Open Day 2024 but have since been used at a range of events.
This page outlines the activities. Watch this space for more info on how you can replicate the activities or run them yourself!
Pokémon Tomography
Can you identify which pokémon is in each pokeball using our simulated CT scanner?
Participants choose one of the 3 pokéballs, making sure not to open it
They place the pokéball on the turntable and press the button corresponding to the sticker on the front of the pokéball
As they turn the turntable through 360 degrees, they see the radiographs update live, and the sinogram being built up.
Then the volume render of the reconstruction appears!
If they identify the pokémon correctly, they get a pokémon card to take home.
Note: We scanned the pokéballs earlier on University of Manchester at Harwell’s lab-based X-ray machine and reconstructed the data using the Core Imaging Library. The activity doesn’t involve any X-rays, we’re just pretending, and showing real results we acquired earlier!
“I enjoyed the x-ray and you could look inside and it was really satisfying. I thought it was interesting and want to be a scientist” – Lola
Image Matching
This game involves matching together radiographs, reconstructed slices and photos of (mostly) everyday objects.
All of the pictures are from real X-ray or neutron tomography scans.
Data references:
History of Tomography Timeline
The picture on the right shows our scrambled tomography timeline!
The aim of the game is to order these events chronologically.
