A dynamic micro-CT scanner based on a carbon nanotube field emission x-ray source.
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.
Cao
G
G
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. gcao@physics.unc.edu
Lee
Y Z
YZ
Peng
R
R
Liu
Z
Z
Rajaram
R
R
Calderon-Colon
X
X
An
L
L
Wang
P
P
Phan
T
T
Sultana
S
S
Lalush
D S
DS
Lu
J P
JP
Zhou
O
O