The View From Within-for those who may not have seen these elswhere

[Don Orr]

What do you get when you cross a woodturning fanatic and a radiologic technologist ?

You get some unique "insight" into a piece of wood. These are CAT Scan images of a maple burl I did a few years ago when I was still working in a hospital. I got called in one Saturday and just "hapened" to have this burl in my car. When my actual work was done I scanned the burl, just to see how it would come out. I got the idea from seeing the old plywood backboards under ER patients. I could easily see the different plys and grain of the wood. Soooooo.....

One of the best patients I ever scanned-stayed very still, no bodily fluids on me:eek:. You can clearly see the growth rings, the medullary rays that give it the "birdseye" effect, even air pockets and bark inclusions.

I have some other stuff somewhere too for another time.

[glenn bradley]

You sir, are a sick man. I like it!

[Chris Fierro]

Poor burl, must have died when he got that MRI bill! I know my policy doesn't cover that.

[Tim A. Mitchell]

Very interesting. Out of curiosity, did you change any plans for the wood after seeing the insides?

[Neal Addy]

My next turning tool addition!

Let's see... I only need to save my lunch money for about 15 life spans.

[Richard Madison]

Last CAT scan that I have reliable info about cost $3,500, and that was several years ago. Granted that it's fun to look inside the wood, but isn't there a way for that CAT scan time to be "donated" to a person who really needs it and can't afford to pay the bill?

Absolutely no attack or criticism of any kind is intended here! Just asking a question.

[joe greiner]

Last CAT scan that I have reliable info about cost $3,500, and that was several years ago. Granted that it's fun to look inside the wood, but isn't there a way for that CAT scan time to be "donated" to a person who really needs it and can't afford to pay the bill?

Absolutely no attack or criticism of any kind is intended here! Just asking a question.

Good point. This must've been off the books. Dunno about CAT scanners, but lasers for eye surgery have (or had) a royalty payment to the manufacturer per operation.

Joe

[Bill Fleming]

Actually this is a fantastic way to reduce medical costs! Bring scanning into everyday life and then it won't be subject to the "cost management of our health care system."

In other words let's all try to increase the utilization of scanning so that the unit price for all scanning comes down!

And since those of us that might want to have a unique piece of wood scanned don't need liability and malpractice insurance and of course the profit for wood scanning should be lower than people scanning perhaps we will drive overall cost down as we separate out the components.

Then of course we will soon see the home version by Jet as soon as the market develops!

Great idea!

[Jim Becker]

Interesting "wood art"!!!

[Matt Meiser]

I can just see the hospital administrator bringing a wealthy group of donors through to see Don scanning a piece of his firewood! :D

[TYLER WOOD]

I need a radiologist stat in cat scan room 3. We have a patient with weavils and strange growths!!! Oh wait never mind, Don's just playing with the
scanner again. Go back to sleep:D

[John Shuk]

Wow a Real life Burl-opsy:o

[Skip Spaulding]

Probably about the way a a guys brain might look after a few years of "MOXIE" drinking! Only kidding.

[Don Orr]

Thanks for the comments folks. The scanner this was done on usually sits idle all weekend since most of the work is done in the ER scanner. This hospital "donates" more medical services to the community than any other in the area. They also waste more money and time than you can imagine-one of the reasons health care is so expensive. This is a research and teaching hospital and I have scanned some very unusual things-including baboons, a goat, body parts no longer attached to a body and so on.


If I have offended anyone by posting this, I am sorry, I did not mean to. I have given most of my life to helping and caring for others and did not intend this to seem wasteful or frivolous. This is nothing compared to what I see every day.

I will probaly not bother to post the MRI's I did of a fresh cut apple log. I don't want the morality police after me.:(

$3500 for a CAT scan ??? Seems way out of line to me. Reimbursement was probably about $500 if they are lucky. Even MRI's don't usually cost that much.

[Bruce Page]

I will probaly not bother to post the MRI's I did of a fresh cut apple log. I don't want the morality police after me.:(


Don, some people are very quick to judge - or have nothing better to do. Don’t let it bother you.
I think your scans are cool!

[TYLER WOOD]

Don, post away. Your "frivilous" "time wasting" "insurance gouging" pictures are well appreciated by most. I want to see if apple logs have apple seeds that travel up the tree an into the apples. :p

[Alex Elias]

I honestly liked to see the picture and could not understand why some people are so uptight about it. They could be the kind of people who get 2 million $$$ for burning themselves with hot drinks, always looking to make an issue out of nothing.
I would post the apple scan but this time make sure the pictures are larger. That is something you could not see avery day.
Alex Elias

[John Bush]

Nice pics Don,
Slip those films into someones chart and run it by the Path Dept. I would like to see the differential diagnosis on that neoplasm!!

[Richard Madison]

Don,
We thought the $3500 was way out of line too! Thanks for your response and perfectly reasonable and educational answer to my question.

For anyone who got upset or offended, I just asked a question and Don gave me a perfectly good answer. Maybe we could just let that be OK. Who hasn't done a little "government work" in somebody's shop on a night or weekend when it wasn't being used anyway?

Meanwhile, are the MRI's of the apple log interesting? Doesn't the MRI do a better job on soft tissue than the CAT. Is wood a "soft tissue"? Oops, there I go, asking questions again. Sorry about that. Might accidently screw up and learn something.

[joe greiner]

I wasn't wearing my "morality police" hat with my comment; just noting that this very cool investigation might have been done on idle priority, as Don indicates. Fact is, a lot of machinery can deteriorate if not exercised once in a while: oil and fuel get gummy, dust accumulates, ink jet and dot-matrix printers get plugged up, etc. Your hospital's emergency generator is probably programmed to run for a few minutes each week to verify it'll work when needed, even though it might "waste" a little fuel; at least that's how we do it on movable bridges.

IMHO, there's been an excess of narrow-minded bean counting and administrivia in many of our industries, to our overall detriment.

Joe