Towards synchrotron phase-contrast lung imaging in patients – a proof-of-concept study on porcine lungs in a human-scale chest phantom

Abstract

In-line free propagation phase-contrast synchrotron tomography of the lungs has been shown to provide superior image quality compared with attenuationbased 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 mm, 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.

Synchrotron Radiation-Based Refraction-Contrast Tomographic Images Using X-ray Dark-Field Imaging Optics in Human Lung Adenocarcinoma and Histologic Correlations

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An interactive and intuitive visualisation method for X-ray computed tomography data of biological samples in 3D Portable Document Format

“…Staining protocol has been adapted and modified from the original protocol developed by Brian Metscher laboratory 33,34 . After fixation, the samples were dehydrated in increasing concentration of ethanol series (30%, 50%, 70%, 90%), one day in each concentration to minimise the shrinkage of tissues.…”

A multiscale X-ray phase-contrast tomography dataset of whole human left lung

“…At synchrotron facilities, systematic upgrades 11,12 in the X-ray source and imaging techniques over the past decades provide the means to tackle biological questions on meaningful scales and resolution [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] . Although synchrotron-based X-ray imaging can access finer anatomical detail than laboratory micro-CT 18,[20][21][22] , many bioimaging scenarios require further upscaling of the imaging throughput and accommodation of large sample size while maintaining microscopic resolution 23,24 .…”