Imaging Experiment of Multi-Pinhole Based X-Ray Fluorescence Computed Tomography Using Rat Head Phantoms

Multi-pinhole based x-ray fluorescence computed tomography (mp-XFCT) delineates the spatial distribution of the non-radioactive agent in a living body by using fluorescent x-ray photons, which are emitted from the agent on de-excitation soon after extrinsic excitation and acquired with a multi-pinhole collimator and a 2-D detector. One of the potential applications is to image brain of small animals for development of treatment techniques and new drugs of brain disease in preclinical study. However, the measured photons are limited because a brain is covered with a skull which is a highly absorbing object. In this research, in order to investigate the applicability to brain imaging, we performed imaging experiments with phantoms to simulate a rat head using an actual mp-XFCT system, constructed at beamline AR-NE7A in KEK.