Alcor Patient CAT Scan Project
An example of the sort of research work undertaken by cryonics provider Alcor: "During the month of November the research and development team made a field trip to a local medical CAT scanning service, taking with them two recent neuro patients. Due to circumstances surrounding their death, one patient was cryoprotected and the other was not. ... Having safely returned from our trip and taking care of returning the patients to the patient care bay, Steve Graber opened up the first of the patient scan files in our 3-D visualization software. This is where the team could really see some interesting things. ... looking into the brain cavity we could make out the sensor wires which were previously placed into the brain cavity during surgery. Through the slice we can see variations in brain density ... When one compares these identically composed, sectioned and displayed images of a cryoprotected brain [vs] non-cryoprotected brain it is clear that there is a big difference in overall density between these two brains. A-1546 displays a significantly greater electron density than A-1088 throughout the majority of the brain. Overall the A-1546 brain is much more electron dense and we believe this to be evidence that perfusion [of cryoprotectant] did occur, at least in certain areas. ... A future test of a variety of substances under the CAT scanner [is] expected to help to identify electron density specifics of cryoprotectants, which in turn will make our analysis that much more complete. We also expect to test a locally pronounced patient vs an out of state pronounced patient to determine the quality differences in cryoprotection caused by the time-lag to cryoprotection between these two scenarios.... We also expect to test a locally pronounced patient vs an out of state pronounced patient to determine the quality differences in cryoprotection caused by the time-lag to cryoprotection between these two scenarios."