The Xtomo-Cube was made by Rayim, a firm in Jinan, Shandong Province, set up by a research team from the academy's Institute of High Energy Physics, according to tech news site IT Home.

The device measures 14 by 13.2 by 22 centimeters, roughly the size of a desktop speaker.

"The device can be held in one hand and is the world's smallest and lightest CT system," Liu Baodong, Rayim's general manager and a professor-level senior engineer at the institute, told the Science and Technology Daily on Sept. 14.

The paper reported that the previous smallest CT system, developed in Germany, weighs 19 kg.

Built to see inside small things

Liu said the scanner can map the internal 3D structure of samples such as chicken bones, snail shells and medicine capsules at a resolution of 80 micrometers, about the width of a human hair.

IT Home put its scanning field at 16 millimeters across and said its light weight suits it for on-site work at archaeological digs and geological surveys.

The machine draws only about 200 watts and can run outdoors on an ordinary portable power supply, Liu said.

He added that its X-ray source, rotating stage, detector and software were all developed domestically.

"There are even more kinds of CT scanners than cars, from sports cars to trucks, and this one is the mini car of CT," he said. "It doesn't try to scan everything. It focuses on seeing clearly inside small things."

All of the scanner's raw imaging data is open to users, allowing researchers to use it to develop image reconstruction algorithms and train AI models, Science and Technology Daily reported.

CT, short for computed tomography, combines X-ray images taken from many angles into cross-sectional views of an object's interior.

The scanning unit of a conventional hospital CT machine alone typically weighs more than a metric ton.