Radiographers from City University London have used a CT scanner to carry out a postmortem on a woman 2,500 years after her death.

A Somatom Emotion CT scanner from Siemens Healthcare was used to examine an ancient Egyptian mummy called Tahemaa without damaging her remains.

Tahemaa underwent a whole-body scan and 3D images were built up from the cross-sectional images obtained. The team discovered a left femur fracture that had happened after death, and that the brain had not been removed.

"The Emotion is very user-friendly and acquires high-quality axial images in a short time," said Jayne Morgan, Senior Lecturer at City University London. "We were also able to produce on-the-spot multiple axial, sagittal and coronal reconstructions using both soft tissue and bone algorithms. This provided the researchers with an extensive set of images to take away with them on the day, so that they can be used to publish the results immediately."

"This exciting project demonstrates the varied uses for advanced scanning technology beyond the clinical environment," commented Russell Lodge, CT Product Manager at Siemens Healthcare. "The Emotion supports a wide range of clinical applications and is a cost-effective, powerful CT solution."

The Emotion scanner has been used to examine other historical artefacts, such as medieval daggers embedded in the mud of the Thames, a fragile Roman cremation urn and bones from a Victorian cemetery.

For more details, visit www.siemens.com/healthcare.

SOMATOM Emotion and Tahemaa