title: Micro-computed tomography-current status and developments.
abstract: The recent rapid increase in interest in tomographic imaging of small animals and of human (and large animal) organ biopsies is driven largely by drug discovery, cancer detection/monitoring, phenotype identification and/or characterization, and development of disease detection methods and monitoring efficacies of drugs in disease treatment. In biomedical applications, micro-computed tomography (CT) scanners can function as scaled-down (i.e., mini) clinical CT scanners that provide a three-dimensional (3-D) image of most, if not the entire, torso of a mouse at image resolution (50-100 microm) scaled proportional to that of a human CT image. Micro-CT scanners, on the other hand, image specimens the size of intact rodent organs at spatial resolutions from cellular (20 microm) down to subcellular dimensions (e.g., 1 microm) and fill the resolution-hiatus between microscope imaging, which resolves individual cells in thin sections of tissue, and mini-CT imaging of intact volumes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota 55905, USA. elran@mayo.edu
authors.forename: Erik L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Ritman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004583:Electrons; D008852:Microradiography / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D017785:Photons; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D014965:X-Rays