Medical imaging

Abstract: Tomography refers to the cross-sectional imaging of an object from either transmission or reflection data collected by illuminating the object from many different directions. The impact of tomography in diagnostic medicine has been revolutionary, since it has enabled doctors to view internal organs with unprecedented precision and safety to the patient. There are also numerous nonmedical imaging applications which lend themselves to methods of computerized tomography, such as mapping of underground resources...cross-sectional imaging of for nondestructive testing...the determination of the brightness distribution over a celestial sphere...three-dimensional imaging with electron microscopy. Principles of Computerized Tomographic Imaging provides a tutorial overview of topics in tomographic imaging covering mathematical principles and theory...how to apply the theory to problems in medical imaging and other fields...several variations of tomography that are currently being researched.

Abstract: Progress continues in the development of smaller, more penetrable probes for biological imaging.

Abstract: We present a review of methods for the forward and inverse problems in optical tomography. We limit ourselves to the highly scattering case found in applications in medical imaging, and to the problem of absorption and scattering reconstruction. We discuss the derivation of the diffusion approximation and other simplifications of the full transport problem. We develop sensitivity relations in both the continuous and discrete case with special concentration on the use of the finite element method. A classification of algorithms is presented, and some suggestions for open problems to be addressed in future research are made.

Abstract: Solid cancers are spatially and temporally heterogeneous. This limits the use of invasive biopsy based molecular assays but gives huge potential for medical imaging, which has the ability to capture intra-tumoural heterogeneity in a non-invasive way. During the past decades, medical imaging innovations with new hardware, new imaging agents and standardised protocols, allows the field to move towards quantitative imaging. Therefore, also the development of automated and reproducible analysis methodologies to extract more information from image-based features is a requirement. Radiomics--the high-throughput extraction of large amounts of image features from radiographic images--addresses this problem and is one of the approaches that hold great promises but need further validation in multi-centric settings and in the laboratory.

Abstract: X-ray radiographic absorption imaging is an invaluable tool in medical diagnostics and materials science. For biological tissue samples, polymers or fibre composites, however, the use of conventional X-ray radiography is limited due to their weak absorption. This is resolved at highly brilliant X-ray synchrotron or micro-focus sources by using phase-sensitive imaging methods to improve the contrast1,2. However, the requirements of the illuminating radiation mean that hard-X-ray phase-sensitive imaging has until now been impractical with more readily available X-ray sources, such as X-ray tubes. In this letter, we report how a setup consisting of three transmission gratings can efficiently yield quantitative differential phase-contrast images with conventional X-ray tubes. In contrast with existing techniques, the method requires no spatial or temporal coherence, is mechanically robust, and can be scaled up to large fields of view. Our method provides all the benefits of contrast-enhanced phase-sensitive imaging, but is also fully compatible with conventional absorption radiography. It is applicable to X-ray medical imaging, industrial non-destructive testing, and to other low-brilliance radiation, such as neutrons or atoms.