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The CT Scan
Both machines aiming to provide physicians with an image of a patient's internal organs to serve as a tool for diagnosis, their main difference lies in the fact that while the x-ray can only provide a shadow outline of the patient's bones and internal organs, the CT Scan can supply three-dimensional multiple images of the organ. These images, which are not visible on a standard x-ray machine, are compiled by a computer into complete, cross-sectional pictures of soft tissue, bone, and blood vessels. Because of the details that the CT Scan images provide, doctors are able to make more accurate and early diagnoses of their patient's illness thereby insuring more successful treatments.
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Computed Tomography (CT), which is also known as Computed Axial Tomography, can be likened to a more powerful and highly sophisticated successor of the x-ray machine developed in the mid-1970's.