Heart disease is the number one cause of death worldwide. To improve therapy and patient outcome, the knowledge of anatomical changes in terms of lumen morphology and tissue composition of constricted arteries is crucial for designing a localized drug delivery to treat atherosclerosis disease. Traditional tissue characterization by histology is a pivotal tool, although it brings disadvantages such as vessel morphology modification during decalcification and slicing. X-ray tomography in absorption and phase contrast modes yields a deep understanding in blood vessel anatomy in healthy and diseased stages: measurements in absorption mode make visible highly absorbing tissue components including cholesterol plaques, whereas phase contrast tomography gains better contrast of the soft tissue components such as vessel walls. Established synchrotron radiation-based micro-CT techniques ensure high performance in terms of 3D visualization of highly absorbing and soft tissues.

Date Published: 3 October 2016
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 9967, Developments in X-Ray Tomography X, 99670O (3 October 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2238702

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9967:
Developments in X-Ray Tomography X
Stuart R. Stock; Bert Müller; Ge Wang, Editor(s)