Emerging Techniques

Abstract

This chapter discusses three recent developments are given as examples of emerging techniques with significant potential: phase contrast imaging, radiomics and ultra-high dose rate radiotherapy. X-ray phase contrast imaging is still under development, and arguably the field has not reached its full potential yet. Different phase contrast imaging techniques have been introduced in recent decades, and some of these have found important applications in medical imaging. Most phase contrast techniques have been introduced, or at least developed, taking advantage of highly coherent X-ray sources. Propagation-Based Phase-Contrast Imaging is very easy to implement, provided that the X-ray source has a suitably high degree of spatial coherence: all that is needed is to choose appropriate values for the source-to-sample and sample-to-detector distances. Analyser-Based Imaging usually requires a monochromatic and highly collimated X-ray beam. The principle of edge illumination is to create a very narrow beam which hits the sensitive region of the detector at its edge.