Quantum correlation imaging technology successfully applied in the X-ray band

2024-01-10

Due to the extremely strong penetrability of X-rays, they can easily penetrate human soft tissues, allowing people to observe their internal conditions even in non-invasive situations. Therefore, X-ray transmission imaging, X-ray CT and other X-ray imaging technologies have become one of the important detection methods in clinical diagnosis and treatment.

However, the existing X-ray imaging methods in clinical practice, such as fluoroscopy imaging and phase contrast imaging, essentially rely on accumulating photon signals to achieve a certain image contrast, resulting in low imaging efficiency and high radiation dose requirements. As a type of high-energy electromagnetic wave with extremely short wavelengths, high-dose X-rays pose great harm to human cells and proteins, potentially leading to diseases such as cancer and leukemia. Reducing the radiation dose required in the medical X-ray imaging process has always been the main research direction of medical X-ray imaging instruments.

A feasible solution is to apply ghost imaging to the X-ray band. Ghost imaging, also known as quantum correlation imaging or single pixel camera imaging, is an indirect imaging method. The conventional imaging method is to use a multi pixel detector to record the intensity and color of a beam of light interacting with an object for imaging. Ghost imaging, on the other hand, is based on the correlation between the intensity of two light beams, namely the object beam (object light) after the interaction between the light and the sample, and the reference beam that has not acted on. This imaging method can achieve high-resolution imaging under low radiation dose conditions.

In 2018, a research team from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, used a simple method of randomly modulating light intensity to achieve tabletop X-ray ghost imaging, completing single photon level ultra-low dose imaging. However, the resolution and quality of the imaging results cannot meet the requirements of medical imaging. In order to make X-ray ghost imaging applicable in the field of medical imaging, the research team conducted further research and attempted to solve the imaging resolution bottleneck problem.

Recently, the research team utilized a self-developed Hadamard gold mask amplitude modulation board to achieve incoherent X-ray ghost imaging based on a true single pixel detector for the first time. Compared with the research results in 2018, this method utilizes a Hadamard matrix with orthogonal completeness and upgrades the original algorithm through compressive sensing and convolutional neural networks, achieving super-resolution imaging that breaks through source size limitations. The experimental results indicate that this method utilizes 37 μ The X light source with a size of m obtained 10 at a sampling rate of only 18.75% μ The imaging results with m-resolution are sufficient for direct diagnosis of cancerous tissue, meeting the resolution requirements of clinical fine imaging.

This research not only reduces the radiation dose required for X-ray imaging, but also reduces the cost of single pixel detectors and requires less spatial coherence and intensity of radiation sources, greatly promoting the practical process of X-ray ghost imaging. The application of X-ray ghost imaging in clinical practice not only reduces the radiation damage to patients during examination, but also reduces the cost of examination, which will bring huge changes to the field of X-ray imaging and is also a blessing for patients.

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