UNC Grants License To Start-Up Medical Imaging Company

UNC Chapel Hill, Press Release

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has granted NextRay Inc. an exclusive license to develop and commercialize defraction enhanced imaging (DEI) technology, which creates X-ray images through the defraction instead of the absorption of X-ray beams.

The technology allows images to be made using fewer X-rays, exposing patients to a much lower dose of radiation. Researchers say this could be especially important to patients who are more sensitive to the effects of radiation (babies, children, pregnant women and younger adults) and those who are X-rayed frequently, such as in screening or monitoring the effects of therapy.

In conventional medical X-ray images, the various shades of gray are produced because different tissues absorb different amounts of X-ray energy. In defraction enhanced imaging, scientists look at how beams pass through the tissue and how they bend and scatter. Because these properties vary more subtly between different types of tissue, the resulting images are clearer and more detailed than conventional X-rays.

source: UNC