KA Imaging CTO Dr. Karim S. Karim is attending the SPIE International Medical Imaging Symposium, being held in San Diego from February 19 to 23, where presented the study “Multimodal single-shot x-ray phase-contrast imaging using a high-resolution micropillar-based grating”. The study, a part of engineer Abdollah Pil-Ali’s PhD dissertation, was co-authored by Abdollah Pil-Ali, Sahar Adnani and Dr. Karim from the University of Waterloo, as well as Serena Qinyun Z. Shi and Professor Dr. Peter B. Noël from the University of Pennsylvania.

In this work, the authors present a novel approach to build a large area high resolution X-ray grating for emerging phase contrast X-ray imaging applications.  Like optical light undergoing refraction when passing through a prism, X-rays also refract when passing through objects. However, X-ray refraction is very minor akin to seeing a football stadium from the moon and usually requires a synchrotron source. An X-ray grating helps amplify the refracted signal and thus allows generation of three images with one single exposure: attenuation, phase and scatter in a compact laboratory setup. The simultaneous presence of attenuation and scatter images can help with both material composition and material identification e.g., telling the difference between fine and coarse powders or even the difference between aluminum and steel.

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics. The SPIE Medical Imaging meeting, to be held in San Diego, offers an opportunity to hear the latest advances in image processing, physics, computer-aided diagnosis, perception, image-guided procedures, biomedical applications, ultrasound, informatics, radiology, and digital and computational pathology.