Biomedical X-ray Imaging Enabled by Carbon Nanotube X-ray Sources^†

Although discovered more than 100 years ago, X-ray source technology has evolved rather slowly. The recent invention of the carbon nanotube (CNT) X-ray source technology holds great promise to revolutionize the field of biomedical X-ray imaging. CNT X-ray sources have been successfully adapted to several biomedical imaging applications including dynamic micro-CT of small animals and stationary breast tomosynthesis of breast cancers. Yet their more important biomedical imaging applications still lie ahead in the future, with the development of stationary multi-source CT as a noteworthy example.