Australian National University researchers say their discovery has the potential to make 3D medical imaging cheaper, safer and more accessible to patients.
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Dr Andrew Kingston from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering said the study was the first to create a 3D X-ray image using "ghost imaging".
Ghost imaging is a new and emerging field, according to the researchers, but no studies had yet attempted to map the inside of a 3D object.
The problem with traditional X-rays is that too much radiation can increase the risk of cancer.
That limits how often patients can be tested with CT systems, 3D mamography for breast cancer screening and other 3D X-ray approaches.
“The beauty of using the ghost imaging technique for 3D imaging is that most of the X-ray dose is not even directed towards the object you want to capture," Dr Kingston said.
"That’s the ghostly nature of what we’re doing.
“There’s great potential to significantly lower doses of X-rays in medical imaging with 3D ghost imaging and to really improve early detection of diseases like breast cancer."
The research team, which included the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and Monash University in Melbourne, used ghost imaging to take 3D X-ray images of an object’s inside.
In a statement, ANU said the researchers developed a new ghost imaging measurement system using a series of patterned X-ray beams.
They then used the measurements and a computer to create a 2D X-ray projection image of the object.
This process was repeated with the object at different orientations to construct a 3D image.
“Our most important innovation is to extend this 2D concept to achieve 3D imaging of the interior of objects that are opaque to visible light,” Dr Kingston said in the statement.
“3D X-ray ghost imaging, or ghost tomography, is a completely new field, so there’s an opportunity for the scientific community and industry to work together to explore and develop this exciting innovation.”
Monash University's Professor David Paganin said the team’s achievement could be compared to the early days of electron microscopes, which could only achieve a magnification of 14 times.
“This result was not as good as could be obtained with even the crudest of glass lenses using visible light,” Professor Paganin, one of the study's co-researchers, said.
“However, the microscope using electrons rather than light had the potential – realised only after decades of subsequent development – to see individual atoms, which are much tinier than an ordinary microscope using visible light can see.”
The work is published in Optica.
