CT scanning technology has become a routine modality in many fields of medicine, and yet the imaging provided by CT scanners is pretty low resolution in a world of $500 4K TVs. Researchers at Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on a potentially revolutionary new way that gets CT imaging down to a resolution of 100 nanometers. This is compared to about 500 nanometers that has so far been possible with lab-based CT scanners.
The investigators built what they call a Nano-CT device that avoids the challenge of using X-ray optics to focus the radiation beam. It instead relies on a new X-ray source, which is not an expensive particle accelerator, that naturally generates a focused beam, and a detector with a very low noise level. The result approaches the resolution of electron microscopes, while providing a 3D view into the interior of the objects being studied.
The research was motivated by academics at the Department of Zoology at the University of Kassel in Germany, who wanted to study the anatomy of small animals such as worms and spiders. Their first subject was the Euperipatoides rowelli, a velvet worm, the interior structure of whose legs you can see in the video below.
The technology should of course also help to study minute structures within the human anatomy, and perhaps even lead to clinical applications such in preparation for microsurgery and diagnosis involving tiny anatomical features.
Study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Myoanatomy of the velvet worm leg revealed by laboratory-based nanofocus X-ray source tomography…
Via: TUM…