Researchers test x-ray prototype

In this talk, Ran Zhang, PhD, will present a prototype developed by a group of medical physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison of a low-dose, multicontrast chest x-ray system that can provide three mutually complementary images from a single acquisition. The new system is fast and eventually could be put to use diagnosing and screening for lung cancer, the team suggests.

The researchers built a multicontrast chest x-ray system that can provide conventional absorption contrast, differential phase contrast, and dark-field x-ray contrast images in a single acquisition. They implemented several technical innovations to achieve data acquisition of the entire chest with a coverage of 28 cm along the superior-inferior direction within four seconds. Initial imaging tests were performed using a chest phantom.

The estimated air kerma and effective dose were well below the effective dose for a typical chest x-ray and the quality of the absorption contrast images matched conventional chest x-rays, the group found.

"A new prototype multicontrast [chest x-ray] system was developed to enable low radiation dose and fast scans of human chest-sized objects within four seconds," Zhang and colleagues noted.

Attend this session to learn the details.

This paper received a Roadie 2021 award for the most popular abstract by page views in this Road to RSNA section.