To achieve the project goals, this proposal includes two research strands: (A) a systematic preclinical biomedical research program to determine the greatest diagnostic utility of this new technology using various small animal models (including emphysema, fibrosis, and asthma), and (B) the technical development of this innovative new in vivo medical imaging technology for a next-generation human dark-field CT scanner.
In detail, the following important scientific achievements were achieved and published in this project:
- First technical realisation and demonstration of a dark-field computed tomography on the human scale (Viermetz et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022);
- Development of the detailed technical design for of a human-scale Talbot-Lau interferometer for dark-field CT (Viermetz et al., IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 2022);
- Initial Characterization of Dark-field CT on a clinical gantry (Viermetz et al., IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 2022);
- Development of an algorithm for modelling vibrations of a tiled Talbot-Lau interferometer on a clinical CT (Schmid et al., IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 2022);
- Fabrication of X‐ray absorption gratings by centrifugal deposition of bimodal tungsten particles in high aspect ratio silicon templates (Pinzek et al., Scientific Reports, 2022);
- Evaluation of qualitative and quantitative Assessment of Emphysema Using Dark-Field Chest Radiography (Urban et al., Radiology, 2022);
- X-ray Dark-Field Chest Imaging: Qualitative and Quantitative Results in Healthy Humans (Gassert et al., Radiology, 2022);
- Performance of a first principal study using phase‐contrast imaging for the detection of large airway pathologies after lung transplantation (Umkehrer et al., Scientific Reports, 2021);
- Development of a method for quality and parameter control of X-ray absorption gratings by angular X-ray transmission (Gustschin et al., Optics Express, 2019);
- Development of a theoretical framework for comparing noise characteristics of spectral, differential phase-contrast and spectral differential phase-contrast x-ray imaging (Mechlem et al., Physics in Medicine & Biology, 2020);
-Algorithmic development of a method for spectral differential phase-contrast X-ray radiography (Mechlem et al., IEEE TMI, 2018);
- Investigation of a grating-based phase-contrast and dark-field computed tomography with a single-shot approach (Teuffenbach et al., Scientific Reports, 2017).
