| Summary: | The development of a non-invasive method of visualizing gene expression in larger animals could revolutionize some aspects of gene research by opening up a wider variety of animal systems to explore; some of which may be better models of human systems. Presently, most gene expression studies employ Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) transfected into the genome of the animal system. For larger animals, an x-ray equivalent of GFP would be desirable due to the high penetrating power of x-rays. A model gene modification system is to use the Sodium (Na) Iodide Symporter (NIS) which will cause the accumulation of iodine in cells which express the NIS. To non-invasively observe the dilute iodine accumulated by the cancer cells transfected with NIS in the head of small animals, such as a rat, two synchrotron-based imaging methods were studied: K-Edge Subtraction (KES) imaging and Fluorescence Subtraction Imaging (FSI).<p>
KES needs wide monochromatic x-ray beams at two energies bracketing the K-edge of the contrast agent existing or injected in the tissues. The monochromatic beam in the synchrotron facility normally is prepared by a double crystal monochromator. The appearance of the azimuthal angle (tilt error) in the double crystal monochromator creates intensity variations across the imaging field. This misalignment was studied through another two synchrotron-based imaging methods, Diffraction Enhanced Imaging (DEI) and Multi-Image Radiography (MIR), which show this problem clearly in their processed images. The detailed analysis of the effect of the tilt error, how it affects the resulting images, and how to quantify such an error were presented in the thesis. A post processing method was implemented and the artifacts caused by the improper experimental settings were discussed.<p>
With the wide monochromatic beam prepared by the double crystal monochromator, a sequence of KES experiments were done and the detection limit of KES was quantified at a projected amount of 17.5mM-cm iodine in a physical model of a rat head with a radiation dose of 2.65mGy. With the raster scan of the object relative to the monochromatic pencil beam, FSI was studied to obtain higher Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) for local area and better detection limit compared to KES. The detection limit of FSI was measured as a projected amount of 2.5mM-cm iodine in the same physical rat head with a tolerable radiation dose of 24mGy. According to the comparison of these two imaging techniques with references to imaging time and area, radiation dose, spatial resolution, and SNR, it was concluded that these two imaging techniques can be used complementarily in imaging dilute contrast material. Due to the short imaging time and large imaging area, KES is used first to provide a global view of the object, locate the area of interest, do the preliminary diagnosis, and decide whether the further FSI is necessary. Due to its high SNR for the dilute sample, FSI can be used when the area of interest is known. The combination of these two imaging techniques will be very promising and powerful. To facilitate the comparison of KES and FSI, a quality factor was developed to evaluate the performance of the imaging system.<p>
The measured detection limits in our experiments are far beyond the thyroidal iodine concentration of a rat (around 1mM). To further improve the performance of KES, a bent Laue crystal monochromator was designed to do the simultaneous iodine KES imaging which overcomes the artifacts in the iodine image caused by the temporal difference for a single set of images. The designed monochromator can provide two separated x-ray beams bracketing the K-edge of iodine at the same time with a very high spatial resolution which is only depends on the source size, a very high energy resolution which can almost compete with that of the double crystal monochromator, and an acceptable photon flux.
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