Early Detection of Amyloid Plaque in Alzheimer's Disease Via X-ray Phase CT.

摘要

In this project, we proposed to develop the x-ray phase contrast CT imaging method for early detection of amyloid plaque in Alzheimer s disease. As specified in SA#1 and the project timeline, the major tasks of Year 1 and Year 2 are the construction and optimization of a prototype x-ray phase contrast CT system to carry out the tasks specified in SA#2 and #3. The prototype x-ray phase contrast CT has been built in the PI s Lab and is working with full functionality (Fig. 1). In the 1st and 2nd years, we accomplished the tasks specified in SA#1 andSA#2. In the 3rd year, we partially completed the tasks specified in SA#3 acquisition of x-ray phase contrast CT image of AD brainspecimen and its comparison with that acquired by the conventional CT (Fig. 7). However, mainly due to two reasons (i) the fabrication/optimization of x-ray gratings were much more complicated and challenging than we initially anticipated and (ii) the acquisition of one set of projection data in the x-ray phase contrast CT takes about 12 hours because of the limited output power of micro-focus x-ray tube we have not fully completed the tasks specified SA#3 that should be accomplished in Year 3. A one-year no-cost extension of this projecthas been request and approved. We ll continue to work on these tasks and (see Table II for project timeline in the revised statement of work (SOW)). Thus far, under partial support of this award, four (4) journal papers have been published in Medical Physics one of the leading journals in medical imaging, and eight (8) papers published in leading international conferences.