Advances in the visualization of unstained brain tumors using grating-based x-ray phase-contrast tomography

We report advances and complementary results concerning a recently developed method for high-sensitivity grating-based hard x-ray phase tomography. We demonstrate how the soft tissue sensitivity of the technique can be used to obtain in-vitro tomographic images of a tumor bearing rat brain specimen, without use of contrast agents. In particular, we demonstrate that brain tumors and the white and gray brain matter structure in a rat's cerebellum can be resolved by this approach. The findings are potentially interesting from a clinical point of view, since a similar approach using three transmission gratings can be implemented with more readily available x-ray sources, such as standard x-ray tubes. Moreover, open the results the way to in-vivo experiments in the near future.