Towards synchrotron phase-contrast lung imaging in patients – a proof-of-concept study on porcine lungs in a human-scale chest phantom
In-line free propagation phase-contrast synchrotron tomography of the lungs has been shown to provide superior image quality compared with attenuation-based computed tomography (CT) in small-animal studies. The present study was performed to prove the applicability on a human-patient scale using a chest phantom with ventilated fresh porcine lungs. Local areas of interest were imaged with a pixel size of 100 µ m, yielding a high-resolution depiction of anatomical hallmarks of healthy lungs and artificial lung nodules. Details like fine spiculations into surrounding alveolar spaces were shown on a micrometre scale. Minor differences in artificial lung nodule density were detected by phase retrieval. Since we only applied a fraction of the X-ray dose used for clinical high-resolution CT scans, it is believed that this approach may become applicable to the detailed assessment of focal lung lesions in patients in the future.
Source: Journal of Synchrotron Radiation - Category: Physics Authors: Wagner, W.L. Wuennemann, F. Pacil é , S. Albers, J. Arfelli, F. Dreossi, D. Biederer, J. Konietzke, P. Stiller, W. Wielp ü tz, M.O. Accardo, A. Confalonieri, M. Cova, M. Lotz, J. Alves, F. Kauczor, H.-U. Tromba, G. Dullin, C. Tags: propagation based imaging phase retrieval synchrotron radiation preclinical chest phantom high-resolution porcine lung imaging research papers Source Type: research