December 16, 2004

Zhong Zhong Explains Diffraction Enhanced Imaging at the 399th Brookhaven Lecture

To look below the surface of the human body in search of deep-seated injury or disease, today’s radiologists use an alphabet-soup of imaging techniques: computerized tomography, or CT; magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI; positron emission tomography, or PET; single photon emission computed tomography, or SPECT; whole body scanners; and ultrasound.

Zhong Zhong

Despite the advancements in non-invasive medical imaging, 80 percent of radiology still involves the well-known x-ray. But x-ray imaging technology has not changed very much over the past 100-plus years, mostly showing bone much more clearly than soft tissue, such as ligaments, cartilage, or blood vessels.

Now, thanks to researchers working at BNL, x-rays from the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) are being employed in a new, low-dose experimental technique to visualize not only bone, but also soft tissue, in a way that is not possible using conventional x-rays. Called diffraction enhanced imaging (DEI), the technique provides all the information provided by conventional x-rays, plus additional data on soft tissues that were previously accessible only using alternative methods such as MRI or ultrasound.

Zhong Zhong, a physicist at the NSLS and the co-inventor of DEI, has been developing the technique for nine years. He discussed the imaging technique at the 399th Brookhaven Lecture, “Diffraction Enhanced Imaging: Seeing X-Rays as One Sees the Light” at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, December 15, 2004 in Berkner Hall. Zhong was introduced by Steve Dierker, NSLS Chair and Associate Laboratory Director for Light Sources.

Zhong is currently responsible for the DEI program and the high-energy x-ray scattering facility at NSLS beamlines X15A and X17B1, respectively.

Zhong earned his B.S. in physics from Beijing University, China, in 1990; received an M.S. in applied physics from Michigan Technological University in 1992; and, in 1996, received his Ph.D. in physics from Stony Brook University.