A 2007 R&D 100 Award has been garnered by the Ultra-High-Resolution Mammography System (UHRMS) that equips doctors with a low-cost, high-quality alternative to digital radiography (currently the most popular mammographic technology at leading hospitals). The new mammography system was developed thanks in part to research carried out at the X-ray Operations and Research 2-BM beamline at the Argonne Advanced Photon Source. UHRMS represents a form of computed radiographic technology that replaces traditional x-ray film with a glass-ceramic imaging plate made of fluorochlorozirconate (FCZ), which then can be scanned, with the resulting data fed into a computer and digitized.
The Ultra-High Resolution Mammography System offers several notable improvements over common x-ray films and scintillating screens, including reusability, wide dynamic range, and direct digitization.
The developers/researchers are Argonne scientist Jacqueline Anne Johnson, SUNY-Stony Brook Research Assistant Professor Anthony R. Lubinsky, and University of Paderborn ( Germany ) Scientific Employee Stefan Schweizer.
As noted in their 2007 paper, "A Glass-Ceramic Plate for Mammography," published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers used beamline 2-BM to characterize the new fluorochlorozirconate image plates. They further note that, “The materials show the potential for superior resolution to existing polycrystalline X-ray imaging systems, and they provide high X-ray conversion efficiency.”
Image from "ZBLAN-based X-ray storage phosphors and scintillators for digital X-ray imaging," by G. Chen, J. Johnson, R. Weber, S. Schweizer, D. MacFarlane, J. Woodford, and F. De Carlo, published in Proceedings of SPIE Medical Imaging 2005: Physics of Medical Imaging, 5745, 1351 (2005).
Contact: Jacqueline A. Johnson, [email protected]
See: Jacqueline A. Johnson, Stefan Schweizer, and Anthony R. Lubinsky, "A Glass-Ceramic Plate for Mammography," J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 90(3), 693 (2007). DOI: 10.1111/j.1551-2916.2007.01488.
Use of the Advanced Photon Source was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.
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