Don't forget how a CT scanner works: it effectively takes thousands of xrays in a 360 degree plane around the body at different slices through the body. Start at the head, 360 degrees around the area. Move the body down a bit, do the thorax, 360 degrees, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CT_scanner Actually, most of the tech you see on the screen has been available for years - as in, a lot of ct scanners can do a 3d reconstruction anyway. The images you see on that vid have been done for years, it's just the setup which is pretty slick and neat. You can pan and scan and manipulate the images like that using any radiology imaging software. In clinical practice, most people don't bother with fancy reconstructions, not because it's memory intensive, but because there's no point. It looks nice, but most of the answers you can get without doing a silly reconstruction. You'll often see it done for fractures. And, as someone has already mentioned, scans aren't without their risk. As that wikipedia points out, you get about 3x your yearly dose of radiation in that one scan. And as for coupling it with other scans, again, kinda done anyway. But if you suspect someone has some pathology that needs a scan, you normally just pick the right scan for the job instead of taking a shotgun approach to the whole thing. It's cost and time intensive.
And as for replacing the autopsy, hmmm. For about 10 years the Swiss have been trying to come out with virtual autopsies, heralding it as the way of the future http://www.virtopsy.com/ The guy offers courses on how to use a CT scanner instead of an autopsy. The storage and memory problems not withstanding, there's also the cost of the systems, and the fact that there are very few radiologists worldwide who would be willing to take a 300k a year paycut to report on a bunch of corpses when pathologists have been doing the job for about 1/10th the cost for years. It's shown to be useful in very limited situations, including identification of remains in mass disasters... but again as a day to day tool, it's pretty hard to justify the cost. As far as I know, there are less than 10 forensic centres performing routine CT autopsies, none of which are based in the States. Albuquerque will probably be the first. Melbourne, Victoria does it, and probably has the highest throughput of any institute I've seen, but it really doesn't affect outcomes very much (ie, the person's still dead).
What this is basically is a really nice teaching tool that can help people learn a bit about human anatomy. It would be great in museums and the odd medical library.
