X-Ray Fluorescent Computed Tomography Aiming at Cancer Imaging

2020 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K12026
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 90110:Biomedical engineering-related
• Research Institution: Yamagata University
• Principal Investigator: Yuasa Tetsuya 山形大学, 大学院理工学研究科, 教授 (30240146)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: 蛍光X線 / CT / 生体撮像 / 機能情報

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of this research is to develop an imaging method to depict functional information of a variety of organs using non-radioactive imaging agent. For this, we proposed an CT imaging method for pre-clinical use using x-ray fluorescence emitted from non-radioactive agent. Although at first we aimed at cancer imaging, we changed our target to rat's brain imaging for some reasons. We constructed a prototype imaging system at beamline ARNE-7A, KEK, Japan. In this research, we performed several preliminary imaging experiments using different phantoms to affirm the feasibility of brain imaging. Finally, we perform an ex-vivo imaging experiment using rat's brain. We observed that imaging agent is accumulated in a specified region in a brain. The result demonstrates that our method can be an alternative or a complement of existing imaging method such as SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) or PET (Positron Emission Tomography), which uses radioactive agent.

Free Research Field

医用画像工学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

遺伝子工学の進歩により，種々の疾患モデル小動物の作製が容易となり，これら小動物を用いて疾病の機序解明や治療薬の開発を目的とした前臨床研究が盛んに行われている．その際、対象臓器・器官の機能情報の定量的評価には，PETやSPECTなどの放射性同位元素をトレーサーとして用いる分子イメージング手法が用いられる。しかしながら，放射性同位元素を取り扱うための大規模な設備が必要であるという大きな制約がある．本研究により，放射性薬剤を必要としない本手法を代替できる可能性を示せた．