Periodic Reporting for period 4 - RespeCT (Respiratory Disease Screening with Dark-Field Computed Tomography)
Período documentado: 2021-02-01 hasta 2022-07-31
Complementing this main technological development goal, we investigated the potential future clinical diagnostic application of this technology by systematically studying several small animal disease models and using an existing dark-field radiography prototype.
As one of the most potentially beneficial applications, we focused specifically on a rapidly growing healthcare challenge, namely the early detection and screening of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In Europe, COPD is estimated to affect 5-10% of adults over the age of 40. This means that 12-25 million people in the European Union are affected by COPD.
The results of this project demonstrate that dark-field CT imaging is technically feasible on a human scale and that dark-field contrast can in principle improve early diagnosis, which would ultimately lead to a significant extension of the lives of millions of Europeans.
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).