Laser-wakefield accelerators as x-ray sources for medical imaging

Laser-wakefield accelerators, comprising of a high-power laser (> 100 TW) laser pulse incident on a low-density plasma, are a promising compact sources of high-energy electron beams. Recently it was shown that plasma-based accelerators can act as effective wigglers, capable of the production of high brightness and spatially coherent hard x-ray beams. Experiments have previously demonstrated the applicability of these beams for high-resolution absorption and phase-contrast x-ray imaging, but here we go a step further and show that it is possible to perform full tomographic imaging and large area phase-contrast imaging of medically-relevant tissue samples. A human femoral trabecular bone sample was imaged over several hundred successive shots, facilitating the full 3D reconstruction of the bone surface at 50 micron resolution. Additionally human prostate samples were imaged at high resolution (∼ few micron) using a scanning technique.