Clinical step onward with X-ray dark-field imaging and perspective view of medical applications of synchrotron radiation in Japan

This paper reports, the application of synchrotron radiation to basic medicine at SPring-8 involving instrumentation and medical application of imaging and scattering. Emphasis should be laid on X-ray dark-field imaging (DFI) whose goal is clinical diagnosis of organs that have been invisible by ordinary techniques. Development of this technique is under way both at SPring-8 and KEK. The X-ray optics of DFI comprises a Bragg asymmetric monochro-collimator and a Lane case analyzer with a diffraction index of 4 4 0 using the X-ray energy of 35 keV (lambda = 0.0354 nm) in a parallel position. This analyzer that can provide with 80 mm x 80 mm view size has 2.15 mm thickness. At present the spatial resolution is around 5-10 mu m. Visibility of some organs such as soft bone tissue at excised human femoral head and breast cancer tissue is under test. This preliminary test shows that the DFI seems feasible in clinical diagnosis. Furthermore, a perspective view of application of synchrotron radiation to clinical medicine in Japan will be given. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.