Medical Imaging becomes more Accurate and Easier with 3D X-Ray Techniques

Today’s healthcare professionals have access to increasingly accurate images with which they can screen, diagnose, and guide patients through the advent of every modern imaging techniques–combined tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound, and digital imaging. Medical images are a special type of images which can be used to diagnose patients’ diseases. There are several ways of obtaining these images, such as CT-scan, MRI, and X-ray imaging. Such types of imaging methods usually lead to poor contrast medical images which prevent the doctor from observing and could result in a wrong diagnosis. Using enhanced imaging techniques is essential.

An international research team has discovered two new approaches to 3D images created using X-rays that could enhance disease screening, studied rapid processes, analyze material properties, and offer structural information on opaque objects with unique details. X-rays pass through materials which cannot pass through visible light because of high energy and short wavelength. In many applications, however, the use of 3D X-ray imaging technique is difficult as long-term exposure to x-rays is necessary. One approach may allow 3D imaging of sensitive biological sample or studying very speedy processes, to speed up the development of more durable materials.

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The other approach may reduce the dose of X-rays required for certain types of medical imaging.

In ghost imaging, an X-ray beam that doesn’t contain significant information about an object individually encodes a random design that acts as a reference and never tests the sample directly, while a second, correlative beam passes through the sample. The researchers were able to make random X-ray patterns, and take a 2D image by shining a bright ray light beam through the metal foam. Afterward, they passed through a weak copy of the beam with a large one-pixel sensor that captured the X-rays passing through the sample. The process is repeated to produce a 3D tomographic image of the internal structure of the item for various illuminating patterns and sample-object orientations.

The researchers may use the new approach to measure a 3D image before the sample can be destroyed which may be useful for delicate biological samples. In the new approach, a crystal splits an inbound X-ray beam into nine beams which illuminate the sample simultaneously. Using sensor-oriented data from each beam allows researchers to at once acquire nine different 2-D projections of a sample object before the intense X-ray beams destroy it.