Development of a low dose clinical lung screening prototype for early detection of COPD and lung cancer using a novel x-ray source to enable Talbot-Lau interferometry

项目总结/摘要 慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）和肺癌是第三和第六大 全球常见的死亡原因。一个主要的挑战是没有有效的筛查， 能够早期检测这些疾病的方法，以及当这些疾病最终被 一旦被发现，这些疾病往往处于晚期，几乎没有有效的治疗策略。在 以肺癌为例，超过一半的人在确诊后一年内死亡。 暗场（基于散射的）X射线对比度最近已经被证明提供令人兴奋的 早期检测肺部病变的能力，包括癌症和COPD， 与传统的胸部X线摄影相当。这种对比机制明显不同 从目前的方法，其使用X射线的吸收来进行对比，而不是 X射线的散射。由这种对比机制提供的信息需要 一种新兴的基于光栅的X射线技术，称为Talbot-Lau干涉法，它使用三组 光栅（光源、相位和检测器）以实现对比度。然而，一个关键的瓶颈， 在通过人体成像所需的高X射线能量（~60 keV）下使用该技术 胸部是一个源光栅所需的纵横比不能制造。 我们建议开发一个肺暗场成像原型使用一个主要的x射线源的创新 这消除了对X射线源光栅的需要，以使Talbot-Lau干涉测量法能够在较高的温度下进行。 X射线能量该系统将关键性地实现以下临床潜力的演示： 用于早期检测肺部病变的暗场射线照相术。 拟议的第一阶段6个月的项目是一个无光栅Talbot-Lau的原理证明 模拟电路板建议的第二阶段24个月项目是开发一个 完成了原型系统，并通过实验验证了其性能。

Project Summary/Abstract Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer are the third and sixth most common causes of death worldwide. One major challenge is that there are no effective screening methods capable of early detection of these diseases and when these diseases are finally detected, they are often at advanced stages for which few effective treatment strategies exist. In the case of lung cancer, more than half of people die within the year of diagnosis. Darkfield (scattering-based) x-ray contrast has been recently demonstrated to provide exciting capabilities for early detection of lung pathologies, including cancer and COPD at doses comparable to conventional chest radiography. This contrast mechanism differs significantly from current approaches, which use the absorption of x-rays for contrast rather than the scattering of x-rays. Accessing information provided by this contrast mechanism requires an emerging grating-based x-ray technique called Talbot-Lau interferometry, which uses three sets of gratings (source, phase, and detector) to achieve contrast. However, a critical bottleneck for using this technique at the high x-ray energies (~60 keV) required for imaging through a human chest is a source grating with the aspect ratios required cannot be fabricated. We propose to develop a lung darkfield imaging prototype using a major x-ray source innovation that removes the need for the x-ray source grating to enable Talbot-Lau interferometry at high x-ray energies. The system will critically enable demonstrations of the clinical potential of darkfield radiography for early detection of lung pathologies. The proposed Phase I 6-month project is a proof-of-principle of a grating-less Talbot-Lau breadboard set-up on a phantom. The proposed Phase II 24-month project is to develop a complete prototype system and experimentally verify its performance.