High-resolution local imaging using a micro-CT

An X-ray micro-tomography system has been developed for in vivo small animal imaging studies. For efficient in vivo scanning, it has a rotating gantry on which the X-ray source and the flat panel X-ray detector are mounted. To reconstruct artifact-free images of a small local region inside the animal subject from the truncated projection data, the projection data from the large field of view (FOV) scan of the whole animal subject are combined with the projection data from the small FOV scan of the region of interest. For the acquisition of X-ray projection data, a 1248 times 1248 flat-panel x-ray detector with the pixel pitch of 100 mum has been used. The developed system has the spatial resolution of 12 lp/mm when the highest magnification ratio of 5:1 is applied to the zoom-in imaging.