Benefit from NASA

The high-tech art of digital signal processing (DSP) was pioneered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the mid-1960s for use in the Apollo Lunar Landing Program. Designed to computer enhance pictures of the Moon, this technology became the basis for the Landsat Earth resources satellites and subsequently has been incorporated into a broad range of Earthbound medical and diagnostic tools. DSP is employed in advanced body imaging techniques including Computer-Aided Tomography, also known as CT and CATScan, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). CT images are collected by irradiating a thin slice of the body with a fan-shaped x-ray beam from a number of directions around the body's perimeter. A tomographic (slice-like) picture is reconstructed from these multiple views by a computer. MRI employs a magnetic field and radio waves, rather than x-rays, to create images. In this photograph, a patient undergoes an open MRI.