1708, either, cat: 58
MICRO-CORONARY VESSEL IMAGING USING PHASE-CONTRAST X-RAY
COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY
J Wu1 , T Takeda1, L Thet Thet1, A Yoneyama2, Y Tsuchiya1, T Imazuru1,
S Matsushita1, Y Hirai2, M Minami1
1
Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba,
Ibaraki, Japan, 2Advanced Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd., Japan
In this study we present for the first time, an image of coronary vessels in an extracted rat
heart obtained using phase-contrast x-ray CT. The phase-contrast x-ray CT system
consisted an asymmetrically cut silicon crystal, a two-crystal interferometer, a phase
shifter, an sample cell and an x-ray CCD camera with an 0.018 mm pixel size. The
Wistar rat was excised and the coronary arteries were perfused with Ringer•fs solution
using the Langendorf procedure method. The heart was rotated inside a 25 mm thick
acrylic sample cell and imaged by a phase-contrast x-ray CT system with a 24 mm x 30
mm field of view at 35 keV x-ray energy. The number of projections was 250. The
tomographic images were reconstructed using a filtered back projection algorithm and
three-dimensional image of the heart was reconstructed by a volume-rendering technique.
With the phase-contrast x-ray CT, it was possible to successfully image the small
coronary vessels and myocardium fascicles of the rat heart without the need of a contrast
agent by image processing extraction from the same CT image. Especially noteworthy,
the coronary arterial tree can be clearly depicted down to branches of about 0.03 mm in
diameter. It can be concluded that phase-contrast x-ray CT is a powerful tool to
investigate the three-dimensional structure of coronary vessels in the myocardium exvivo.