# Development of a low dose clinical lung screening prototype for early detection of COPD and lung cancer using a novel x-ray source to enable Talbot-Lau interferometry

> **NIH NIH R44** · SIGRAY, INC. · 2021 · $840,685

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer are the third and sixth most
common causes of death worldwide. One major challenge is that there are no effective screening
methods capable of early detection of these diseases and when these diseases are finally
detected, they are often at advanced stages for which few effective treatment strategies exist. In
the case of lung cancer, more than half of people die within the year of diagnosis.
Darkfield (scattering-based) x-ray contrast has been recently demonstrated to provide exciting
capabilities for early detection of lung pathologies, including cancer and COPD at doses
comparable to conventional chest radiography. This contrast mechanism differs significantly
from current approaches, which use the absorption of x-rays for contrast rather than the
scattering of x-rays. Accessing information provided by this contrast mechanism requires an
emerging grating-based x-ray technique called Talbot-Lau interferometry, which uses three sets
of gratings (source, phase, and detector) to achieve contrast. However, a critical bottleneck for
using this technique at the high x-ray energies (~60 keV) required for imaging through a human
chest is a source grating with the aspect ratios required cannot be fabricated.
We propose to develop a lung darkfield imaging prototype using a major x-ray source innovation
that removes the need for the x-ray source grating to enable Talbot-Lau interferometry at high
x-ray energies. The system will critically enable demonstrations of the clinical potential of
darkfield radiography for early detection of lung pathologies.
The proposed Phase I 6-month project is a proof-of-principle of a grating-less Talbot-Lau
breadboard set-up on a phantom. The proposed Phase II 24-month project is to develop a
complete prototype system and experimentally verify its performance.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10274731
- **Project number:** 4R44HL154950-02
- **Recipient organization:** SIGRAY, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** David Vine
- **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $840,685
- **Award type:** 4N
- **Project period:** 2021-06-01 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10274731

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10274731, Development of a low dose clinical lung screening prototype for early detection of COPD and lung cancer using a novel x-ray source to enable Talbot-Lau interferometry (4R44HL154950-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10274731. Licensed CC0.

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