Quantification of muco-obstructive lung disease variability in mice via laboratory X-ray velocimetry.

To effectively diagnose, monitor and treat respiratory disease clinicians should be able to accurately assess the spatial distribution of airflow across the fine structure of lung. This capability would enable any decline or improvement in health to be located and measured, allowing improved treatment options to be designed. Current lung function assessment methods have many limitations, including the inability to accurately localise the origin of global changes within the lung.

Real-time in vivo imaging of regional lung function in a mouse model of cystic fibrosis on a laboratory X-ray source.

Most measures of lung health independently characterise either global lung function or regional lung structure. The ability to measure airflow and lung function regionally would provide a more specific and physiologically focused means by which to assess and track lung disease in both pre-clinical and clinical settings. One approach for achieving regional lung function measurement is via phase contrast X-ray imaging (PCXI), which has been shown to provide highly sensitive, high-resolution images of the lungs and airways in small animals.

Application of a novel in vivo imaging approach to measure pulmonary vascular responses in mice.

Noninvasive imaging of the murine pulmonary vasculature is challenging due to the small size of the animal, limits of resolution of the imaging technology, terminal nature of the procedure, or the need for intravenous contrast. We report the application of laboratory-based high-speed, high-resolution x-ray imaging, and image analysis to detect quantitative changes in the pulmonary vascular tree over time in the same animal without the need for intravenous contrast. Using this approach, we detected an increased number of vessels in the pulmonary vascular tree of animals after 30 min of recovery from a brief exposure to inspired gas with 10% oxygen plus 5% carbon dioxide (mean ± standard deviation: 2193 ± 382 at baseline vs.

Live small-animal X-ray lung velocimetry and lung micro-tomography at the Australian Synchrotron Imaging and Medical Beamline.

The high flux and coherence produced at long synchrotron beamlines makes them well suited to performing phase-contrast X-ray imaging of the airways and lungs of live small animals. Here, findings of the first live-animal imaging on the Imaging and Medical Beamline (IMBL) at the Australian Synchrotron are reported, demonstrating the feasibility of performing dynamic lung motion measurement and high-resolution micro-tomography. Live anaesthetized mice were imaged using 30 keV monochromatic X-rays at a range of sample-to-detector propagation distances.

Feasibility study of propagation-based phase-contrast X-ray lung imaging on the Imaging and Medical beamline at the Australian Synchrotron.

Propagation-based phase-contrast X-ray imaging (PB-PCXI) using synchrotron radiation has achieved high-resolution imaging of the lungs of small animals both in real time and in vivo. Current studies are applying such imaging techniques to lung disease models to aid in diagnosis and treatment development. At the Australian Synchrotron, the Imaging and Medical beamline (IMBL) is well equipped for PB-PCXI, combining high flux and coherence with a beam size sufficient to image large animals, such as sheep, due to a wiggler source and source-to-sample distances of over 137 m.