Chinese scientists build world’s smallest CT scanner, weighing just 6kg

Chinese researchers have developed the world’s smallest CT scanner, a portable device designed to produce images of tiny fossils and archaeological relics.

Built by the Shandong province-based Rayim, the Xtomo-Cube is about the size of a desktop speaker and weighs just 6kg (13.2lbs).

“The device can be held in one hand and is the world’s smallest and lightest CT system, earning it the nickname ‘palm-sized CT scanner’,” Liu Baodong, a senior engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and general manager of Rayim, told the Science and Technology Daily on Monday.

The machine had a spatial resolution of 80 micrometres, roughly the width of a human hair, and could analyse objects from snail shells to medicine capsules, Liu said.