Strategies for fast and low-dose laboratory-based phase contrast tomography for microstructural scaffold analysis in tissue engineering

The application of x-ray phase contrast computed tomography (PCT) to the field of tissue engineering is discussed. Specific focus is on the edge illumination PCT method, which can be adapted to weakly coherent x-ray sources, permitting PCT imaging in standard (non-synchrotron) laboratory environments. The method was applied to a prominent research topic in tissue engineering, namely the development of effective and reliable decellularization protocols to derive scaffolds from native tissue. Results show that edge illumination PCT provides sufficient image quality to evaluate the microstructural integrity of scaffolds and, thus, to assess the performance of the used decellularization technique. In order to highlight that edge illumination PCT can ultimately comply with demands on a high specimen throughput and low doses of radiation, recently developed strategies for scan time and dose reduction are discussed.