In recent years preventative medicine has proved invaluable to health. In addition, there have been numerous developments in machines and techniques but the """"""""x-ray"""""""" is still a staple in medical diagnosis and disease prevention. The proposed new capability will improve the spatial resolution for x-ray detection and allow advances in the diagnosis and treatment of numerous diseases. Improved resolution and ease of read-out can only help in the speed and detail with which a problem can be diagnosed. In combination with complementary imaging methods, the proposed innovation has the potential to increase sensitivity to specific types of tissue damage. A main goal of the research is to develop improved spatial imaging using equal or reduced x-ray fluxes, in this way, the applicability of the technique can be increased. Using, what is in effect a solid-state x-ray detector means that transferring images to computer for analysis or storage is readily accomplished, enabling complementary techniques to be integrated. Current x-ray photon storage materials such as image plates are fundamentally limited in their spatial resolution by scattering in the read-out stage from grain boundaries in the polycrystalline materials, which are used. Imaging with a thin and transparent glass sheet as proposed here minimizes this scattering effect; scattering would therefore no longer be the spatial resolution limiting property of the material. The whole of medicine would benefit from such a detector. Disease could be diagnosed before symptoms develop using improved contrast and targeting. With increased speed of detection and improved image resolution patient comfort is increased and radiation dose decreased. The proposed project will produce experimental glass samples at the University of Paderborn in Germany; initial characterization will be done at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) using Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Raman Spectroscopy. The photoluminescence quantum efficiency and spatial resolution of the glasses will be measured at an Advanced Photon Source (APS) beam line and the read-out system will be engineered at Containerless Research Inc. (CRI) in Evanston, IL.
