C. Dullin - X-ray imaging techniques in heart and lung research

Christian Dullin, 1) University Medicine Göttingen, Dept. for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology; 2) MPI for Multidisciplinary Sciences Göttingen, Translational Molecular Imaging; 3) University Hospital Heidelberg, Dept. for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology and Translational Lung Research Center, 4) Italian synchrotron “Elettra” Trieste, SYRMEP group speaks on "X-ray imaging techniques in heart and lung research".
Abstract:
Imaging has become indisputable not only for medical diagnosis, staging of diseases and following therapy response, but also in biomedical research. Since, the latter is usually con- ducted in small animal models, the smallness of the organs and the their rapid motion gen- erate strong challenges for the application of imaging techniques. X-ray imaging despite the known side-effects can offer great spatial and temporal resolution, but suffers from an intrinsic low contrast for soft-tissue.
The talk will summarizes the essential technical details of x-ray imaging, staining and contrast agent approaches as well as the special advantages of Synchrotron based x-ray imaging. Furthermore, I will present different applications for in-vivo and ex-vivo imaging
in heart and lung research, ranging from correlative virtual histology of formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tissue, in-vivo functional heart and lung imaging towards potential new imaging techniques for future patient applications.
Background:
I’m a physicist by training and lecturer in experimental radiology at the University Medicine Göttingen and a member of the German Lung Research Center in Heidelberg. Moreover, I’m a long term collaborator of the Italian synchrotron in Trieste. I have about 20 years experi- ence in preclinical imaging using mostly x-ray imaging techniques and I’m in charge of the preclinical imaging facility at the University Medicine Goettingen. Currently, I’m one of the Scientific Ambassadors of the European EuroBioImaging initiative.