Grapefruit USA Inc (GPFT)

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goldcoastoh,

Please review this recent article & the technical information found for this "new X-ray device." There is no Realtime 3-D claim for this machine with "super imaging power."

Nesch,LLC is a private company in Merrillville Indiana looking for applications of their X-ray device to be used in airport security. Eventually, it appears they will be seeking FDA Clearance for the DEXI-LRM1 in the medical industry.

Also, please check the links below and let us know your opinion of their X-ray device, patent portfolio and the radiation dose calculations for their DEXI-LRM1...

http://www.post-trib.com/news/1970235,scanner-machine-0101.article

New X-ray device has super imaging power

DEXI can detect guns, explosive powders

January 3, 2010

BY TERESA AUCH SCHULTZ, [phone]

The workers at a Merrillville company have spent the past six months developing their own form of airport security -- a machine they say is superior to the metal detectors and body scanners making the news.
Guns, explosive powders, plastic weapons -- the machine can show them all, no matter where they're at.

Even if they're inside a human body.

If everything goes according to their plan, the Purdue Technology Center incubator-based Nesch LLC will see its product in airports worldwide helping to stop terrorists from using airplanes as their personal weapons.

The device called Diffraction-Enhanced X-ray Imaging, or DEXI, is basically an X-ray machine on steroids -- but with far fewer X-rays. A normal X-ray machine will use three sources -- light absorption, refraction and scattering -- to produce one image. Because the light refractions and light scatterings don't mix well, the result is a blurry image, one that picks up on bones but not soft tissue.

Ivan Nesch, CEO of Nesch LLC, says that DEXI creates a separate image from each of the sources that makes for not just clearer pictures but allows people to see softer material -- including powders like the one a Nigerian man supposedly brought with him on a Christmas Day flight to blow up the plane.

"(With conventional X-ray machines,) you could not even think about this," Nesch said.

Pictures provided by Nesch show various objects taken with a conventional X-ray and the DEXI system. In conventional X-rays, plastic bags filled with powder are obscured but are clearly seen in images taken by DEXI. Another DEXI image shows a plastic knife hidden in another object.

No comment from U.S. Rep. Peter Visclosky, who has thrown his weight behind the incubator, was available as of Thursday.

Carol Muehleman, an anatomist and professor at Rush University's Department of Biochemistry and an adviser for Nesch LLC, says the images are a significant improvement of conventional X-rays' capability.

"For the first time, soft tissues can be seen with X-rays," she said. "Not just bone, but soft tissues, ligaments, tendons, skin even."

DEXI's original use was for medical testing. A small machine has been made to take images of lab animals such as rats and fish. Nesch said he and his co-workers started thinking about other applications for the product, though, and began focusing on security uses about six months ago. Since then, they've come to realize how it could benefit air travel safety, he said.

"We're the only technology that can pick up drugs and explosives hidden inside the body," Nesch said.

DEXI also doesn't get confused just because an object is behind, say, a bag of water, which Nesch claims happens to other body scanners. Powders and water absorb X-rays at about the same rate, meaning the picture created is one big blur. DEXI can distinguish the two, Nesch said.

Another benefit, Nesch said, is that the machine uses less X-ray radiation than a normal X-ray machine does -- about 50 times less. Even for a person who flies frequently, the machine gives out a fraction of the X-rays that a person picks up just by flying, Nesch said.

As for privacy concerns, Nesch said his product is superior because it doesn't reveal body shapes. His company is also working on creating an elemental analysis program, meaning a computer can do any initial scans to see whether something is showing up that officials need to look at more closely, Nesch said.

The hope is that the images will also be simple enough so workers will not have to be specially trained to view them, he said.

Using the machine in airports also could help the company get approval from the Federal Drug Administration to use it on humans for medical purposes. The company can collect data as the device is put to use in airports, Muehleman said. The data could then be submitted to the FDA. The machine could eventually be used in mammograms and other clinical testing.

Although DEXI isn't cheap -- the main component will likely cost around $160,000 -- it will be in the same price range of other full-body scanners, Nesch said. The company expects to be ready to start taking orders by March and producing machines by the second half of 2010. So far, Israel, India, Saudi Arabia and other countries have shown an interest in purchasing the machines. Nesch LLC also has a contract with a company to sell them in Latin America, Nesch said.

http://www.neschllc.com/index.html

http://www.neschllc.com/products/documents/dose-calculations_DPF.pdf