This talk will be of interest to people curious about how fundamental science research at CERN has led to new medical imaging technologies that are already improving healthcare for people around the world. The talk is of particular interest to radiologists and health professionals interested in photon counting CT and how it will evolve over the coming years.

During 20-23 April 2026, CERN hosted the 8th SpecXray workshop. A strong theme of the workshop was photon counting technology. This category of technology was pioneered at CERN for experiments associated with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  The category of x-ray detector is now used in medical CT (computed tomography) equipment from five major vendors – including one vendor using CERN’s Medipix technology.

Photon counting has its roots in the 1980s and 1990s when CERN’s community developed a combination of segmented silicon sensors and very large-scale integration (VLSI) readout circuits to enable precision measurements at unprecedented event rates. By the late 1990s, several groups had demonstrated proofs of concept and by 2008, pre-clinical spectral photon counting CT systems were under investigation by several groups.

In 2011, scientific leaders in the field decided to bring together engineers, physicists, and clinicians to help guide the technology into clinical adoption. Fifteen years later, major vendors now recognize that photon counting detectors will almost certainly be used for most of the 300,000,000 medical CT examinations performed around the world each year.

During the workshop clinicians, academics, and industry engineers shared current challenges and potential development avenues that will maximize the health benefit as the technology matures. This talk reviews the journey from high energy physics, to prototype systems, to clinical adoption, and the future outlook.

Bio:
Professor Anthony Butler is a radiologist and Director of Imaging at the University of Otago, Christchurch, and a clinical radiologist at Christchurch Hospital. He has supervised more than 45 PhD students, published over 150 scientific papers (H-index >35), received more than 10 research awards, including from the Royal Society of New Zealand, and led more than NZ$12 million in research grants. A former member of the detector physics group at CERN, he co-founded MARS Bioimaging Ltd in 2007 to take CERN technology to the clinic. He continues to serves as Chief Technology Officer, developing spectral photon-counting CT technology for point-of-care applications (NZ MedSafe and USA FDA-510k clearance).

Qualifications:
MBChB - Medicine 1998 - University of Otago
GradDipSc - Physics 2006, University of Canterbury
FRANZCR - Radiology 2005, The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists
PhD - Engineering 2007, University of Canterbury

Coffee will be served at 10:30