Kitchen Marcus J, Buckley Genevieve A, Leong Andrew F T, Carnibella Richard P, Fouras Andreas, Wallace Megan J, Hooper Stuart B
School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.
Phys Med Biol. 2015 Sep 21;60(18):7259-76. doi: 10.1088/0031-9155/60/18/7259. Epub 2015 Sep 8.
Respiratory health is directly linked to the structural and mechanical properties of the airways of the lungs. For studying respiratory development and pathology, the ability to quantitatively measure airway dimensions and changes in their size during respiration is highly desirable. Real-time imaging of the terminal airways with sufficient contrast and resolution during respiration is currently not possible. Herein we reveal a simple method for measuring lung airway dimensions in small animals during respiration from a single propagation-based phase contrast x-ray image, thereby requiring minimal radiation. This modality renders the lungs visible as a speckled intensity pattern. In the near-field regime, the size of the speckles is directly correlated with that of the dominant length scale of the airways. We demonstrate that Fourier space quantification of the speckle texture can be used to statistically measure regional airway dimensions at the alveolar scale, with measurement precision finer than the spatial resolution of the imaging system. Using this technique we discovered striking differences in developmental maturity in the lungs of rabbit kittens at birth.
呼吸健康与肺部气道的结构和力学特性直接相关。为了研究呼吸发育和病理学，非常需要能够定量测量气道尺寸及其在呼吸过程中大小变化的能力。目前还无法在呼吸过程中以足够的对比度和分辨率对终末气道进行实时成像。在此，我们揭示了一种简单的方法，可从基于单一传播的相衬X射线图像中测量小动物呼吸过程中的肺气道尺寸，从而使辐射量降至最低。这种成像方式使肺部呈现为斑点状强度模式。在近场区域，斑点的大小与气道的主要长度尺度直接相关。我们证明，对斑点纹理进行傅里叶空间量化可用于统计测量肺泡尺度上的区域气道尺寸，测量精度比成像系统的空间分辨率更高。利用这项技术，我们发现新生兔幼崽肺部在发育成熟度上存在显著差异。
