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Doctors have used x-ray machines for 100 years, but they remain an imprecise and limited diagnostic tool.
The process of firing x-rays on to one side of a patient and recording on to film those that make it through to the other side results in a rather fuzzy black-and-white image that's not always easy to read. For instance, routine mammograms miss an estimated 20 per cent of breast cancers.
But a team of Canterbury University researchers is aiming to revolutionise medical x-ray technology with high-precision colour imaging.
Under the umbrella of the university's commercialisation arm, Canterprise, a new company - provisionally called C-IT - is being formed to raise capital, develop a marketable product, and promote the technology to medical researchers and doctors. Canterprise says the potential benefits of colour x-ray technology are huge, including more accurate diagnosis and significantly lower dosages of radiation.
However, the researchers can't claim all the credit - like many scientific advances, C-IT is essentially exploiting a new market for an existing technology.
The underlying technology - dubbed Medipix - has been developed over 10 years by Cern, the 20-nation European laboratory for particle physics (well-known for its role in developing the world wide web and making it freely available to the world).
Medipix is a sophisticated x-ray detector, and was developed primarily to meet Cern researchers' need for highly sensitive and accurate imaging in the laboratory's work in high-energy physics and astronomy.
The University of Canterbury is member of Cern, and as a result of its association was able to bring a Medipix detector to its physics department for research work. By chance, it ended up in the medical physics rather than the high-energy physics section of the department, where researchers saw its potential in a new light.
"In Christchurch we have very strong medical physics, image processing and radiology departments, we looked at the detector in a different way and said, 'Hey, this probably has very strong medical uses'," said C-IT's technical director Anthony Butler.
Current medical x-ray technology captured only some of the information available, explained Butler. X-rays, like other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, have varying levels of energy or colour. The Medipix not only captures this variation, it also records the exact time that each x-ray hit the detector.
Contrast solutions such as iodine, barium and gadolinium - widely used by doctors to diagnose vascular and digestive conditions - show up as a fluorescent glow, giving a much clearer impression of what is happening inside the patient.
It also achieves much sharper resolution and exposes patients to a fraction of the radiation used in current x-ray technology.
Butler said the Canterbury teams ability to see a medical application for the technology owed much to the university's multi-disciplinary culture and its strong relationship with the local hospital.
As he pointed out, researchers were often so focused on their own disciplines that they didn't see the potential for familiar technology in other spheres.
"Physicists' understanding of what goes on in a hospital or what doctors need is the same as a lay person's. They haven't been to medical school, and most wouldn't have done biology at university because they study maths and quantum physics. Similarly, in a hospital, most doctors' understanding of the way the machines and technology works is very limited."
Butler said all medical imaging technologies developed over the past 100 years - x-rays, CT, MRIs and ultrasound - were well-established in other research disciplines for decades before they crossed into medicine.
C-IT is negotiating with Cern for exclusive rights to commercialise Medipix in the medical area. It is also raising capital.
Butler said it could be five to 10 years before the technology was used in hospitals because of the need to meet regulatory requirements. But the company said it could be marketed to the animal health and medical research laboratory sectors within the next 18 months.
Dr Hugh Butler - Anthony Butler's Australia-based uncle and a specialist in high-tech start-ups - is managing the commercialisation process. He said each segment being targeted by the company was a US$50-million-plus ($71 million) market.
The company said it could potentially generate revenue of $5 million a year from the animal research field in Australia and New Zealand alone within the next two years.
Establishing the technology in these markets will fund the work and market development required to push it into the human health market.
