Micro-CT Scanners for Biomedical Applications: An Overview

摘要

Micro-CT captures images with spatial resolution in the micron domain and has major applications in small animal imaging, allowing in vivo tests and longitudinal analyses for disease studies and pharmaceutical development. Tomography is the theory of and technology for the production of sectional or volumetric images from external measurements of an underlying multi-dimensional function. Line integrals are the most common external measures, which are grouped into projections in convenient formats. Availability of multiple projections from sufficiently many orientations allows accurate recovery of the underlying function. Modern computing technologies are important for implementation of tomography, which requires large amounts of data and calculations. Computerized tomography (CT) is an interdisciplinary field, involving physics, mathematics, computing, optical, electrical and electronics engineering, mechanics, and biomedical sciences. X-ray CT utilizes X-ray beams to probe interiors of opaque solid objects. Contrast in an X-ray CT image comes from the difference in X-ray linear absorption coefficient. X-ray micro-CT, or micro-CT in brief, captures images with spatial resolution in the micron domain.