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A dynamic micro-CT scanner based on a carbon nanotube field emission x-ray source

2009; IOP Publishing; Volume: 54; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1088/0031-9155/54/8/005

1361-6560

Guohua Cao, Yueh Z. Lee, Rui Peng, Z Liu, Ramya Rajaram, Xiomara Calderón‐Colón, Libao An, P. Wang, Thanh T.N. Phan, Shabana Sultana, David S. Lalush, Jianping Lü, Otto Zhou,

Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research

Current commercial micro-CT scanners have the capability of imaging objects ex vivo with high spatial resolution, but performing in vivo micro-CT on free-breathing small animals is still challenging because their physiological motions are non-periodic and much faster than those of humans. In this paper, we present a prototype physiologically gated micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scanner based on a carbon nanotube field emission micro-focus x-ray source. The novel x-ray source allows x-ray pulses and imaging sequences to be readily synchronized and gated to non-periodic physiological signals from small animals. The system performance is evaluated using phantoms and sacrificed and anesthetized mice. Prospective respiratory-gated micro-CT images of anesthetized free-breathing mice were collected using this scanner at 50 ms temporal resolution and 6.2 lp mm−1 at 10% system MTF. The high spatial and temporal resolutions of the micro-CT scanner make it well suited for high-resolution imaging of free-breathing small animals.