Was cutting it open not an option? Or heating it up to remove any molded plastics? Surely the CT scan cost more than the $129 it would have cost to sacrifice the cable to the hacker gods (assuming we're talking about US healthcare rates for such a scan and no I'm not trying to make this political, it's an honest question, no trolling)

The company the Twitter user works for, Lumafield, makes CT scanners for industrial uses similar to this, so they have a couple lying around the office. They're definitely not paying retail US healthcare prices. Likely the cost to them based on human time spent far exceeds what you'd pay for a tech at a hospital, but it's good advertising.

It's an advertising thing. They do these regularly with new stuff.

Not as cool nerd

A CT scan for calcium scoring is around $100 in the US- and that includes radiologist time to interpret the scan. That is not a negotiated price either- insurance does not cover such scans.

Having said that, no healthcare imaging facility would agree to scan a random cable that someone brought in off the street- unless you knew someone. And then it would probably be free because the marginal cost of running a scan is very low with no radiologist time.

Discussion of the article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37929338