The machines use magnets and radiowaves to excite hydrogen atoms in body tissues, creating data that computers assemble into three-dimensional images.

FORBES: Light It Up

The chip is a graphics accelerator, a specialized supercomputer of sorts that handles the flood of data needed to create moving two- and three-dimensional images.

FORBES: Comeback kid

He took data from the MRI and used software to create a three-dimensional simulation so that, video-game style, he can zoom in and out of the colon and look at it in detail.

CNN: Tracking your body with technology

While data and information move at the speed of light, tangible three-dimensional products are moving faster and in greater volumes than ever before.

FORBES: Exporting Our Way To A Stronger U.S. Economy

To process the MRI data, a computer overlaid on Pickens' brain a virtual three-dimensional grid of 50, 000 cubes called voxels (a word hinting at volume and pixels).

FORBES: Inside T. Boone Pickens' Brain

Instead of collecting data in two dimensions using streamers and then processing the data to produce a 3-D image, they decided to move to three-dimensional acquisition.

ECONOMIST: Inside story