Anuj Kapadia, PhD

My research focuses on developing an innovative imaging modality – Neutron Stimulated Emission Computed Tomography (NSECT), that uses inelastic scattering through fast neutrons to generate tomographic images of the body’s element composition. Such information is vital in diagnosing a variety of disorders ranging from iron and copper overload in the liver to several cancers. Specifically, there are two ongoing projects:

1) Experimental Implementation of NSECT

Neutron spectroscopy techniques are showing significant promise in determining element concentrations in the human body. We have developed a tomographic imaging system capable of generating tomographic images of the element concentration within a body through a single non-invasive in-vivo scan. This system has been implemented using a Van-de-Graaf accelerator fast neutron source and high-purity germanium gamma detectors at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory. This setup has been used to obtain NSECT scans for several samples such as bovine liver, mouse specimens and human breast tissue. In order to extract maximum information about a target sample with the lowest possible levels of dose, it is essential to maximize the sensitivity of the scanning system. In other words, the signal to noise ratio for the experimental setup must be maximized. This project aims at increasing the sensitivity of the NSECT system by understanding the various sources of noise and implementing techniques to reduce their effect. Noise in the system may originate from several factors such as the radiative background in the scanning room, and neutron scatter off of components of the system other than the target. Some of these effects can be reduced by using Time-of-Flight background reduction, while others can be reduced by acquiring a separate sample-out scan. Post processing background reduction techniques are also being developed for removing detector efficiency dependent noise. At this point we have acquired element information from whole mouse specimens and iron-overloaded liver models made of bovine liver tissue artificially injected with iron. Tomographic images have been generated from a solid iron and copper phantom. Our final goal is to implement a low-dose non-invasive scanning system for diagnosis of iron overload and breast cancer.

2) Monte-Carlo simulations in GEANT4

For each tomographic scan of a sample using NSECT, there are several acquisition parameters that can be varied. These parameters can broadly be classified into three categories: (i) Neutron Beam parameters: neutron flux, energy and beam width, (ii) Detector parameters: detector type, size, efficiency and location; (iii) Scanning Geometry: spatial and angular sampling rates. Due to the enormous number of combinations possible using these parameters, it is not feasible to investigate the effects of each parameter on the reconstructed image using a real neutron beam in the limited beam time available. A feasible alternative to this is to use Monte-Carlo simulations to reproduce the entire experiment in a virtual world. The effect of each individual parameter can then be studied using only computer processing time and resources. We use the high energy physics Monte-Carlo software package GEANT4, developed by CERN, which incorporates numerous tools required for building particle sources and detectors, and tracking particle interactions within them. The simulations built so far include the neutron source, HPGE and BGO gamma detectors, and several target materials such as iron, liver and breast tissue.