title: Experimental demonstration of benchtop x-ray fluorescence computed tomography (XFCT) of gold nanoparticle-loaded objects using lead- and tin-filtered polychromatic cone-beams.
abstract: This report presents the first experimental demonstration, to our knowledge, of benchtop polychromatic cone-beam x-ray fluorescence computed tomography (XFCT) for a simultaneous determination of the spatial distribution and amount of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) within small-animal-sized objects. The current benchtop experimental setup successfully produced XFCT images accurately showing the regions containing small amount of GNPs (on the order of 0.1 mg) within a 3 cm diameter plastic phantom. In particular, the performance of the current XFCT setup was improved remarkably (e.g., at least a factor of 3 reduction in XFCT scan time) using a tin-filtered polychromatic beam in comparison with a lead-filtered beam. The results of this study strongly suggest that the current benchtop XFCT configuration can be made practical with a few modifications such as the deployment of array detectors, while meeting realistic constraints on x-ray dose, scan time and image resolution for routine pre-clinical in vivo imaging with GNPs.
authors.affiliation: Nuclear/Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics Programs, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0405, USA.
authors.forename: Bernard L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Nivedh
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Manohar
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Reynoso
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Karellas
authors.forename: Sang Hyun
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Cho
mesh_terms: D003116:Color; D054893:Cone-Beam Computed Tomography / Q000295:instrumentation*; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry*; D007854:Lead / Q000737:chemistry; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D014001:Tin / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D007854:Lead; D014001:Tin; D006046:Gold