High Quality Image of Biomedical Object by X-ray Refraction Based Contrast Computed Tomography

Abstract

Recently we have developed a new Computed Tomography (CT) algorithm for refraction contrast that uses the optics of diffraction-enhanced imaging. We applied this new method to visualize soft tissue which is not visualized by the current absorption based contrast. The meaning of the contrast that appears in refraction-contrast X-ray CT images must be clarified from a biologic or anatomic point of view. It has been reported that the contrast is made with the specific gravity map with a range of approximately 10 Parc sec. However, the relationship between the contrast and biologic or anatomic findings has not been investigated, to our knowledge. We compared refraction-contrast X-ray CT images with microscopic X-ray images, and we evaluated refractive indexes of pathologic lesions on phase-contrast X-ray CT images. We focused our attenuation of breast cancer and lung cancer as samples. X-ray refraction based Computed Tomography was appeared to be a pathological ability to depict the boundary between cancer nest and normal tissue, and inner structure of the disease.