Medical application of synchrotron radiation (SR) is a fast-growing field of research. Since the advent of the angiography studies at SSRL first and then at NSLS in the U.S. in the 1990s, preclinical and clinical research protocols have been developed at Hasylab (Germany), Photon Factory (Japan), ELETTRA (Italia) and at the ESRF (France). Despite the fact that there are only a few dedicated beamlines in the world (two new ones are under construction at the Australian and Canadian synchrotrons), medical research is carried out in almost all synchrotron facilities.Biomedical research at SR facilities has many purposes. Basic research is carried out for diagnostic and/or curing purposes using the ideal experimental conditions offered by a SR source (monochromatic and collimated beam, etc.). A second objective is to develop innovative techniques that can be directly applied in clinical trials at SR sources, and that in the future can be used at new generation table-top X-ray sources presently under development worldwide.In this frame, the ID17 ESRF Biomedical Beamline was built in the 1990s with the aim of developing two specific programs: the Transvenous Coronary Angiography and the Microbeam Radiation Therapy. Thanks to the increase of the users' community, the beamline activities are now also extended to and focused on functional (e.g. lung and brain) and anatomical (e.g. breast and cartilage pathology) imaging, and radiotherapy (including basic radiobiology).The ID17 beamline and the annexed biomedical facility owe their success to the strong synergy of different and complementary competences in physics, medicine, radiobiology, oncology, etc., which are present at the same site.From the early days of construction, the ID17 team has worked in close collaboration with research personnel from the UJF-CHU Grenoble (INSERM U836-Equipe 6 RSRM) and the Swiss-based team for Microbeam Radiation Therapy, and later on with several medical research groups working at other institutions and countries. Moreover, this community was gathered around a multi-tool platform around the synchrotron beams. Presently, the Biomedical facility offers 300 m 2 of laboratory space allowing molecular, cellular and animal biology for realization of in vitro and in vivo protocols.With the purpose of illustrating how the medical community can benefit from SR research, a list of selected publications for the period 2005-2007 is given in the References; a more comprehensive review on medical applications of SR can be found in [1,2]. Table 1 summarizes the techniques and the most important research fields.
K-edge digital subtraction imagingThe K-edge digital subtraction imaging (KEDSI) method utilizes the sharp rise in the photoelectric component of the attenuation coefficient of a given element at the binding energy of the K-electron (e.g. 33.17 keV for I, 34.56 keV for Xe, 50.25 keV for Gd). Depending on the specific needs and constraints, experiments can be carried out either using two beams of energies bracketing the K-edge or by a single beam s...
