According to New Atlas, a groundbreaking new imaging technique uses X-rays produced by advanced particle accelerators to provide 3D images of entire organs in unprecedented detail. While demonstrating the technique, the researchers imaged the lungs of a deceased COVID-19 patient, revealing new insights into how the disease destroys blood oxygen.
The new technique, known as hierarchy tomography (hip-ct), is an X-ray technique that can image entire organs at a resolution of 1 micron, or 100 times the resolution of traditional CT scans.
Advances in imaging come from technological upgrades in The European Synchrotron Radiation Light Source (ESRF). This advanced particle accelerator has recently been improved and is called the Extreme Bright Source Upgrade (esrf-EBS).
This EBS upgrade created the world's first fourth-generation synchrotron, making it the world's brightest X-ray source. This increases the performance of X-rays by a factor of 100 in terms of "brightness and coherence". The X-rays produced by this device are 100 billion times brighter than those found in traditional hospitals.
"The idea of developing this new hip-CT technology was born after the global pandemic began, by combining several techniques used by ESRF for large fossil imaging and taking advantage of the higher sensitivity of ESRF's new extremely bright source, ESRF," explains Paul Tafforeau, chief scientist at ESRF. "This allows us to see incredibly small blood vessels inside a complete human organ in three dimensions, allowing us to distinguish blood vessels from surrounding tissues in a three-dimensional way and even to observe some specific cells."
Using the new technology, a team led by researchers at University College London is launching a project called human organ atlas. Peter Lee, who led the project, said the goal of the Human Organ Atlas is to fill a gap in our understanding of human anatomy.
"Clinical CT and MRI scans can resolve to less than one millimeter, while histology (studying cell/biopsy sections under a microscope), electron microscopy (using electron beams to generate images) and other similar techniques can distinguish structures with submicron precision, but can only be performed in a small tissue biopsy of one organ," Peter said. Hip-CT connects these scales in three dimensions, imaging entire organs and providing new insights into our biological makeup. ”
The human organ atlas will be a free online resource that, when launched, shows several key human organs, including the brain, kidneys, heart, and spleen. The project also provides imaging of healthy lungs compared to the lungs of deceased covid-19 patients.
A basic pathological marker of COVID-19 deterioration is a sharp drop in blood oxygen levels, and hip-ct imaging reveals insights into how this condition occurs through a process known as "shunting." It was previously assumed that covid-19 reduces the oxygen rate of the blood by increasing the shunt level in the lungs, but this is the first direct evidence of the process.
Danny Jonigk, a researcher working on the project at the Hannover Medical School, said: "By combining our molecular approach with hip-ct imaging of the lungs affected by covid-19 pneumonia, we gained a new understanding of how shunts occur between the blood vessels of the two vascular systems in the lungs injured in covid-19, and the effect it has on oxygen levels in our circulatory system. ”
Hip-ct is designed to provide doctors with a library of images documenting how different diseases affect various organs. This never-before-seen structural data illustrates how disease affects tissue structures with resolutions as small as a micron.
Claire Walsh, a mechanical engineer working on the project at University College London, said the detailed images would be used in conjunction with machine learning techniques to improve the insights gained from clinical imaging, such as MRI and CT scans. In addition to helping to better calibrate and improve these existing technologies, Walsh believes hip-CT data will help researchers develop AI systems that can clarify MRI and CT imaging.
Walsh said: "The ability to observe organs across scales like this is truly revolutionary for medical imaging. When we begin to correlate our hip-ct images with clinical images through ARTIFICIAL technology, we will for the first time be able to verify the blurry findings in clinical images with high accuracy. ”
A new study reporting hip-ct is published in the journal Nature Methods.