Human Carcinoma: Early Experience with Phase-Contrast X-ray CT with Synchrotron Radiation—Comparative Specimen Study with Optical Microscopy

Abstract

Phase-contrast x-ray computed tomography (CT) indicates the distribution of the refractive index and has potential to reveal the structures inside soft tissues without a contrast agent. With a synchrotron x-ray source, phase-contrast x-ray CT with a triple Laue-case x-ray interferometer clearly differentiated various human pathologic tissues in the cases of hepatocellular carcinoma with cirrhosis and metastatic colon carcinoma to the liver, and the images closely corresponded to those obtained with low-magnification optical microscopy.

Compact laser accelerators for X-ray phase-contrast imaging

“…A number of studies have now been performed which show the power of phase-contrast imaging for identifying small abnormalities in soft tissues. Indeed, great emphasis has been placed on studying breast cancers, which other methods do not always identify especially in the early stages [45][46][47][48]. They have shown that in vivo imaging of tumours and other medical features can be possible and diagnosis could take place without invasive and worrying operation and time-consuming histology.…”

Fine Biomedical Imaging Using X-Ray Phase-Sensitive Technique

“…In a conventional X-ray CT image, the absorption differences among cancer, fibrosis, necrosis, and normal tissues are difficult to detect because the differences in the linear attenuation coefficients of these tissues are very small. As mentioned earlier, XII enables visualization of the inner structures of human cancer specimens (Takeda et al, 2000) and animal cancer specimens (Momose et al, 1996;Takeda et al, 2004d), the brain (Beckmann et al, 1997), and the kidney (Wu et al, 2009) without contrast agents composed of heavy atomic elements. Here, we describe the images of cancer specimens obtained using XII at 35-keV X-ray energy.…”

“…Phase-contrast X-ray computed tomography was also achieved in combination with general computed tomography . Non-destructive 3D observations of small columnar samples of various biological soft tissues were made (Momose et al, 1996;Takeda et al, 2000). To broaden the scope of interferometry to biomedical applications such as in vivo observations, imaging systems fitted with a two-crystal X-ray interferometer (Becker & Bonse, 1974) have been developed (Yoneyama et al, 1999.…”

Phase-contrast X-ray imaging based on interferometry

“…the determination of È(x, y) from interference patterns expressed in (9), are applicable with the LLL interferometer. One is the fringescanning method (Bruning et al, 1974) and the other is the Fourier transform method (Takeda et al, 1982). The techniques of phase retrieval have enabled¯exible phase-contrast X-ray imaging using the LLL interferometer, even if the interferometer is not complete.…”