Investigations on x-ray luminescence CT for small animal imaging

C. T. Badea; I. N. Stanton; S. M. Johnston; G. A. Johnson; M. J. Therien

doi:10.1117/12.911465

2 March 2012 Investigations on x-ray luminescence CT for small animal imaging

C. T. Badea, I. N. Stanton, S. M. Johnston, G. A. Johnson, M. J. Therien

Proceedings Volume 8313, Medical Imaging 2012: Physics of Medical Imaging; 83130T (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.911465
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2012, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

X-ray Luminescence CT (XLCT) is a hybrid imaging modality combining x-ray and optical imaging in which x-ray luminescent nanophosphors (NPs) are used as emissive imaging probes. NPs are easily excited using common CT energy x-ray beams, and the NP luminescence is efficiently collected using sensitive light-based detection systems. XLCT can be recognized as a close analog to fluorescence diffuse optical tomography (FDOT). However, XLCT has remarkable advantages over FDOT due to the substantial excitation penetration depths provided by x-rays relative to laser light sources, long-term photo-stability of NPs, and the ability to tune NP emission within the NIR spectral window. Since XCLT uses an x-ray pencil beam excitation, the emitted light can be measured and back-projected along the x-ray path during reconstruction, where the size of the x-ray pencil beam determines the resolution for XLCT. In addition, no background signal competes with NP luminescence (i.e., no auto fluorescence) in XLCT. Currently, no small animal XLCT system has been proposed or tested. This paper investigates an XLCT system built and integrated with a dual source micro-CT system. A novel sampling paradigms that results in more efficient scanning is proposed and tested via simulations. Our preliminary experimental results in phantoms indicate that a basic CT-like reconstruction is able to recover a map of the NP locations and differences in NP concentrations. With the proposed dual source system and faster scanning approaches, XLCT has the potential to revolutionize molecular imaging in preclinical studies.

Citation Download Citation

C. T. Badea, I. N. Stanton, S. M. Johnston, G. A. Johnson, and M. J. Therien "Investigations on x-ray luminescence CT for small animal imaging", Proc. SPIE 8313, Medical Imaging 2012: Physics of Medical Imaging, 83130T (2 March 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.911465

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available