Disruptive Computed Tomography (CT) with Ultrafast 3D Scanning
Patent Number: US 62/483,980, US 62/483,982, US 62/408,856, US 62/545,168, and US 62/545,174
 
Executive Summary:
  • Invention Type: Diagnostic and Device
  • Patent Status: Pending
  • Disease Focus: Lung Cancer, Breast cancer, Cardiovascular Disease
  • Basis of Invention: A high-resolution micro-CT imaging system with minimized radiation dose to avoid radiation risk, and minimized scanning time to catch fast physiological processes without significant motion blur in images, such as rapid respiration and cardiac rates of mice (310‐840 beats per minute)
  • How it works: An ultrafast CT system with a fully stationary system configuration, wherein both X‐ray sources and detector(s) are not moving
  • Lead Challenge Inventor: Guohua Cao
  • Inventors: Guohua Cao, Yizheng Zhu
  • Development Stage: Prototype
  • Novelty: Coupled with the compressive‐sensing based interior reconstruction algorithm, this stationary micro‐CT system could lead to an over tenfold faster speed than the state‐of‐the‐art, while reducing the radiation dose by up to 85%. In particular, the ultrafast imaging speed (sub second) can enable, for the first time ever, 3D x‐ray imaging of a free‐moving animal subject without the need for anesthetization. Moreover, another embodiment of this ultrafast CT system further includes additional real‐time optical co‐imaging function, such as fluorescence molecular imaging. The resulted micro‐CT/optical imaging system allows anatomical and molecular imaging of a free‐moving animal. This is a powerful addition considering the broad availability of fluorescent probes that enable the noninvasive study of gene expression, protein function, protein-protein interactions, and a large number of cellular processes.
  • Clinical Applications: Treatment of metastatic cancers
 
General Description:
This ultrafast, fully stationary, easy‐to‐maintain CT technology will have impacts on anatomical, functional and molecular imaging of small animal models, rapid translation of basic knowledge to clinical applications in cardiac exam, tumor imaging, tissue characterization, drug delivery, and image‐guided intervention, etc.; all these will be accomplished with greatly increased efficiency and reduced cost. The commercial impacts of this Virginia Tech technology to the global small animal imaging device market will be huge. Imaging systems with the capabilities discussed above are projected to dominate the global small animal imaging device market, which was projected to be $2.1 billion in 2020. In a longer perspective, the novel imaging technology also holds great potential in security screening, industry inspection, dental imaging and medical imaging, which have a combined market value of $9 billion in 2020.
 
Strengths:
  • Greatly increased efficiency
  • Reduced cost
  • Compact size (portable)
  • Potential uses in security screening, industry inspection, dental imaging and medical imaging
 
Weaknesses:
  • Due to the disruptive nature of this invention, the initial adoption of this new technology will require additional efforts, such as a revised regulation from the institutional animal care and use committee and a different animal setup procedure. However, after the technology is adopted by more users and the superior imaging results have been demonstrated in literature, this technology is expected to dominate the global small-animal imaging market.
 
Inventor Bio: Guohua Cao
http://www.sbes.vt.edu/people/bio.php?person=Guohua-Cao
http://www.sbes.vt.edu/cao/people.html
http://www.imaging.sbes.vt.edu/