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from the picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The most prevalent method for obtaining images of clogged coronary vessels is coronary angiography. For some patients, however, the contrast agents used in this process can cause health problems. A team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now demonstrated that the required quantity of these substances can be significantly reduced if monoenergetic X-rays from a miniature particle accelerator are used.
Soft tissues such as organs and blood vessels are nearly impossible to examine in X-ray images. To detect a narrowing or other changes in coronary blood vessels, patients are therefore usually injected with an iodinated contrast agent.
These substances can sometimes be hazardous to health, however: "Particularly in patients with kidney insufficiency, complications may arise, in some cases even kidney failure," explains Dr. Daniela Münzel, , an adjunct teaching professor for radiology at TUM's Klinikum rechts der Isar. "That is why we are studying possibilities of using lower concentrations of contrast agents."
One approach to reducing the dosage has now been developed by scientists from the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at the Klinikum rechts der Isar, working in close cooperation with the Chair of Biomedical Physics at TUM's Department of Physics. The method, which they have described in a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports, is not based on new contrast agents. Instead it relies on special X-rays generated using the Munich Compact Light Source (MuCLS), the world's first mini-synchrotron, which was officially inaugurated at TUM at the end of 2015.
"Conventional X-ray sources generate a relatively broad range of energy levels. By contrast, the energy of X-rays produced by the MuCLS can be controlled much more precisely," says physicist Elena Eggl, the first author of the paper.
Publication:
E. Eggl, et al. "Mono-Energy Coronary Angiography with a Compact Synchrotron Source". Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 42211 (2017) doi:10.1038/srep42211
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Informative) by Alphatool on Wednesday March 01 2017, @12:03PM (1 child)
The X-ray source used isn't a synchrotron, it uses a laser stimulated plasma. Femtosecond laser pulses hit a plasma to make a coherent and approximately monoenergetic X-ray beam. This is basically the same type of beam produced by a synchrotron, but the method is very different. If anyone is interested there is a basic technical overview at https://www.tum.de/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/detail/article/32564/ [www.tum.de].
(Score: 3, Funny) by fritsd on Wednesday March 01 2017, @01:43PM
What's the machine called? Mr. Bremsstrahlung [wikipedia.org]? (srsly, that would be a good marketing name, methinks).