2016 AAAS Annual Meeting (February 11-15, 2016)

February 10 - 15, 2016

X-Ray Imaging Innovations for Biomedicine

In computed tomography (i.e., CT scans), X-rays generated in an emission source are used to illuminate an organism, project shadows, and undergo measurement in a detector array. Spatiotemporal multiplexing of X-ray shadows enables computational synthesis of people’s internal structures. Today, X-ray CT has a central role in clinical imaging, often as the first and only imaging study before definitive intervention for a wide variety of conditions. More than 100 million CT scans are performed worldwide each year. However, current X-ray CT technology is often insufficient to differentiate benign and malignant etiologies, describe tissue tumor types and grades, or predict early response to therapy. X-ray CT involves ionizing radiation, which has drawn concerns over potential risk of induced cancer formation. This symposium highlights recent improvements in X-ray sources, detectors, and reconstruction algorithms that promise to address some of these long-standing challenges. For example, photon-counting detectors add a spectral dimension to the information content, X-ray gratings extract refractive and elastic scattering features that improve soft tissue contrast, and contemporary reconstruction methods refine image quality with reduced radiation dose. New CT scanners are being developed to offer superior imaging performance and minimize production, deployment, and operation costs. CT scanners also serve as a source of big data that can be archived on the cloud and reused for smarter imaging and universal accessibility.