Computerized Tomography In Urology

Abstract

The subject of this essay is computrized tomography in urology the work in this machine had started at the sixties but the first machine was installeted by 1973. The scanner consist basically of an x-ray rigidly mounted opposite a detectory array, and the system rotates around the body, then the finely collinated x-ray beam passes through the body, and partially absorped this is impregnated on greyscale detectors acording to the densities and trans lated by the help of the computer into body sectionso Where the radio-opaque material appears white and the radiotranslucent appears black and the cross section of the body is formed on a display monitoro This is done for the whole body in a very small thickness of every slice is 2 -13 mm , the distance between two slices is very small, that a small lesion of less than 1 cm can be diagnosed. Initially it was used as a headscanner but soon it had become useful for the whole body and a lot of developments and modifications was introduced. The main uses of computerized tomography in urology is in kidney diseases to diagnose renal abscesses, renal cysts when it is very small and in more than one organ. Also differentiating solid from cystic renal masses, and extrarenal extension of any renal pathology. In the urinary baldder, prostate it is used in staging of tumours and assesing the depth of penteration and extension. In the testis it is used to identify the lymph node metastasis and the volume of the tumour, CT also diagnose undescended testis position, and pathology like atrophy or malignancy. It can not be claimed that CT will replace the conventional methods like I.V.P., ultrasonography but it will act as a complelentary method in diagnosis, used only when the other methods either fails or become technically difficult to interprete.