Top-level design and preliminary physical analysis for the first electron-beam micro-CT scanner

Abstract

A state of the art X-ray micro-CT scanner takes about 20 seconds to acquire a full dataset, which is too slow to capture the rapidly beating heart of small animals. We have been working to develop the first electron-beam micro-CT (EBMCT) prototype for cardiac imaging of the mice and rats. In this paper, we describe the background on electron-beam CT (EBCT) and emphasize the needs for EBMCT. Then, we present a top-level design and a preliminary physical analysis for the first EBMCT scanner. The proposed EBMCT prototype would allow 0.03–0.01 s temporal resolution (35–70 half-scans per second) with 0.2 mm spatial resolution and 10% contrast resolution. Finally, we discuss a few related issues to further highlight that this project is not only important for basic biomedical research but also feasible technically.