Proceedings Article | 11 September 2014
Marzia Buscema, Margaret Holme, Hans Deyhle, Georg Schulz, Rüdiger Schmitz, Peter Thalmann, Simone Hieber, Natalia Chicherova, Philippe Cattin, Felix Beckmann, Julia Herzen, Timm Weitkamp, Till Saxer, Bert Müller
Proc. SPIE. 9212, Developments in X-Ray Tomography IX
KEYWORDS: Phase contrast, Visualization, Tissues, X-rays, Interferometry, Arteries, Phase interferometry, Tomography, Blood circulation, Absorption
Cardiovascular diseases are the number one cause of death and morbidity in the world. Understanding disease
development in terms of lumen morphology and tissue composition of constricted arteries is essential to improve
treatment and patient outcome. X-ray tomography provides non-destructive three-dimensional data with micrometer-resolution.
However, a common problem is simultaneous visualization of soft and hard tissue-containing specimens,
such as atherosclerotic human coronary arteries. Unlike absorption based techniques, where X-ray absorption strongly
depends on atomic number and tissue density, phase contrast methods such as grating interferometry have significant
advantages as the phase shift is only a linear function of the atomic number. We demonstrate that grating interferometry-based
phase tomography is a powerful method to three-dimensionally visualize a variety of anatomical features in
atherosclerotic human coronary arteries, including plaque, muscle, fat, and connective tissue. Three formalin-fixed,
human coronary arteries were measured using advanced laboratory μCT. While this technique gives information about
plaque morphology, it is impossible to extract the lumen morphology. Therefore, selected regions were measured using
grating based phase tomography, sinograms were treated with a wavelet-Fourier filter to remove ring artifacts, and
reconstructed data were processed to allow extraction of vessel lumen morphology. Phase tomography data in
combination with conventional laboratory μCT data of the same specimen shows potential, through use of a joint
histogram, to identify more tissue types than either technique alone. Such phase tomography data was also rigidly
registered to subsequently decalcified arteries that were histologically sectioned, although the quality of registration was
insufficient for joint histogram analysis.
