In many animals, including humans, the lungs encase the majority of the heart thus the motion of each organ affects the other. The effects of the motion of the heart on the lungs potentially provides information with regards to both lung and heart health. We present a novel technique that is capable of measuring the effect of the heart on the surrounding lung tissue through the use of advanced synchrotron imaging techniques and recently developed X-ray velocimetry methods. This technique generates 2D frequency response maps of the lung tissue motion at multiple projection angles from projection X-ray images. These frequency response maps are subsequently used to generate 3D reconstructions of the lung tissue exhibiting motion at the frequency of ventilation and the lung tissue exhibiting motion at the frequency of the heart. This technique has a combined spatial and temporal resolution sufficient to observe the dynamic and complex 3D nature of lung-heart interactions.

Date Published: 17 October 2012
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 8506, Developments in X-Ray Tomography VIII, 85060H (17 October 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.929463

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8506:
Developments in X-Ray Tomography VIII
Stuart R. Stock, Editor(s)