PS3’s Cell Clarifies Medical Imaging

Sony may not be able to get gamers to buy the PS3 in droves, but folks from other walks of life have taken a real interest with the powerful Cell processor that provides the computational backbone to the next-gen system.

Initiatives like Folding@Home, which I posted about previously, are cropping up as more and more researchers realize the invaluable contributions that these “entertainment” (say with appropriate sneer) devices can offer the scientific and medial communities.

The Mayo Clinic has been chatting it up with IBM to harness the chip’s tiny might to improve medical imaging technologies such as MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and CT (computed tomography) scanning. Thus far they’ve been able to improve the quality and precision of the images, and bump the object recognition speed during scanning. How’s that for a professional mod job?

Via | Wired