Clinical application of phase contrast x-ray

Introduction I present experimental evidence that synchrotron hard X-ray are suitable for radiological imaging of biological samples down to the cellular level. Aims To investigate the potential of refractive index radiology using unmonochromatized synchrotron hard x-rays for the imaging of cell and tissue in various diseases. Methods Paraffin and formalin fixed tissue blocks were cut in 3 mm thickness for the xray radiographic imaging. From adjacent areas, 4 μm thickness sections were also prepared for hematoxylin-eosin staining. Radiographic images of dissected tissues were obtained using the hard x-rays from the 7B2 beamline of the Pohang Light Source (PLS). The technique used for the study was the phase contrast images were compared with the optical microscopic images of corresponding histological slides. Results Radiographic images of various diseased tissues showed clear histological details of organelles in normal tissues. Most of cancerous lesions were well differentiated from adjacent normal tissues and detailed histological features of each tumor were clearly identified. Also normal microstructures were identifiable by the phase contrast imaging. Tissue in cancer or other disease showed clearly different findings from those of surrounding normal tissue. Conclusion For the first time we successfully demonstrated that synchrotron hard x-rays can be used for radiological imaging of relatively thick tissue samples with great histological details.