Lyncean Technologies Inc. receives $1.2 M from NCRR to develop new imaging...( Lyncean Technologies Inc. has just r...)

Lyncean Technologies, Inc. has just received a Phase I SBIR grant of $1,296,403 from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) to develop "Differential Phase Contrast Imaging" using the unique x-ray beam produced by the Compact Light Source (CLS). The grant will allow Lyncean to continue its ongoing development of the Compact Light Source and its applications to new methods of imaging (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/lti-fsf010609.php).

The Compact Light Source effort was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program as an advanced technology related to the NIGMS Protein Structure Initiative (PSI). The CLS technology is based on an electron beam stored in a miniature storage ring colliding repeatedly with an opposing infrared light pulse stored in a high-finesse cavity. Each collision produces x-rays through inverse Compton scattering. The entire x-ray source fits in a 10x25 ft room similar in size to those used for Magnetic Resonance Imaging in medical clinics.

The first scientific publication using the CLS x-ray beam employed a technique called Differential Phase Contrast Imaging (DPCI) developed by Professor Franz Pfeiffer (now at TU Munich) and collaborators at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland (http://journals.iucr.org/s/issues/2009/01/00/issconts.html). DPCI uses a pair of micron-scale gratings to create three images: an absorption image enhanced by the x-ray beam quality, a second image sensitive to the phase of the x-ray wave front, and a third image sensitive to the local scattering power. This technique has been primarily developed at the x-ray beam lines in large synchrotrons, and it relies on a small point-like, monochromatic x-ray source to achieve the coherence necessary
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