National museum installs 'world's largest cylindrical CT scanner'

The National Museum of Korea installed a large cylindrical CT scanner, big enough to see through what's inside a wooden Buddha statue. 

The museum has set up what it describes as the world's largest cylindrical CT scanner, the first machine of its kind to be introduced in Korea. The new scanner is large enough to image bulky artifacts like traditional furniture and statues without cutting the treasures in half. 

The National Museum of Korea has been using CT equipment to study the internal structure and construction methods of Korean artifacts since 2017.

Compared to the 600-kilowatt conventional CT scanner, which would hold the object in place while the X-ray source moves up and down, the new scanner leaves the object still on a bed while the machine rotates around 220 degrees and travels horizontally around it. This allows the machine to scan large, heavy and delicate objects better than conventional CT scanners. 

The new scanner can accommodate objects up to 1.1 meters (3 feet 7 inches) in diameter and 3 meters long. 

The museum also expects the scanner to change how it dates wooden artifacts, as the new scanner would be able to read the growth rings of traditional wooden furniture and other timber objects without cutting samples. 

The National Museum plans to build 3-D survey data for Korean artifacts with the new scanner and expand its study into different fields. 

BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]