High-resolution and High-contrast Bio-medical X-ray Imaging by Using Synchrotron Radiation in the PLS

Since Roentgen's discovery of X-ray, X-ray imaging technique has been the most important medical diagnosis tool for more than a century. Though there has been remarkable progress in X-ray imaging techniques, the contrast and the resolution of conventional X-ray imaging have been limited due to the weak absorption contrast of X-rays in bio-medical matter. However, as partially coherent synchrotron X-ray radiation and high-resolution detectors are now available, it; is possible to get high-resolution phase-contrast X-ray images of bio-medical tissue in 3(rd) generation synchrotron light sources. In the Pohang Light Source (PLS), there are two X-ray microscopy beamlines operating for public users: the 1B2 beamline dedicated to high-resolution phase-contrast microscopy, and the 7B2 beamline for lensless white-beam micro-tomography. In this paper, we report phase-contrast X-ray imaging techniques and their applications in the PLS.