Poster 1: The Imaging and Medical Beamline (IMBL)

Open

Australian Synchrotron (ANSTO)
The Australian Synchrotron is a national research facility that uses accelerator technology to produce extremely bright beams of light (from infrared to hard X-rays — up to a million times brighter than the sun). It's one of Australia's most significant pieces of scientific infrastructure, hosting over 6,000 researchers annually who get free, merit-based access.

The radiation is generated when relativistic electrons pass through magnetic fields, with the light then channelled through "beamlines" to samples. These beams support research across health/medical, food, environment, biotechnology, nanotechnology, energy, mining, agriculture, advanced materials, and cultural heritage.

Imaging and Medical Beamline (IMBL)
Our beamline is used across a wide range of fields — engineering, life sciences, palaeontology, materials science, food science, cultural heritage, volcanology, minerals, and industrial processes. It's especially notable as one of the best-equipped synchrotron facilities globally for in vivo research, supporting translational clinical, preclinical, veterinary, and clinical applications.

Technical specs:

• 150 m long, delivering an X-ray beam up to 50 cm wide to a satellite building

• Enables high-resolution, high-sensitivity imaging

• X-ray energies range from 20–350 keV

• Handles samples from millimetres up to 1m × 1m and 100 kg

Capabilities offered:

• Fast, high-resolution in vivo imaging and fluoroscopy

• Computed tomography (CT), including in vivo

• Research tools for high-dose radiotherapy and radiobiology

Imaging bunker (145 m from the X-ray source) houses a large-animal positioning robot, a standard synchrotron CT stage, and a patient positioning robot. At the time of the poster, the bunker and instrumentation were being upgraded for phase-contrast breast CT clinical trials with human volunteers.

Poster 2: Breast imaging - Computed Tomography

Open

Poster 3: Computed Tomography (CT) of mastectomy samples

Open

Project Aims

• The team is using propagation-based phase-contrast X-ray CT (X-ray refraction, not just absorption) to achieve very high sensitivity to small density differences in tissue.

• We’re refining the technique and installing new equipment to develop whole-breast phase-contrast 3D imaging targeted at detecting soft-tissue tumours.

• Compared with current best medical X-ray imaging, we will deliver: higher-quality/diagnostic images, fewer false negatives/positives (a problem caused by tissue overlap in 2D imaging), lower radiation doses, no painful breast compression, and a risk model to help radiologists assess high-density breast images.

Progress to Date

• So far we’ve identified the key imaging parameters relevant to breast cancer imaging: optimal X-ray energy, imaging (propagation) distance, and detector characteristics.

• We’ve shown that synchrotron phase-contrast breast CT improves signal-to-noise ratio by more than 10x at the same radiation dose.

• We’ve shown that phase-contrast CT can match the spatial resolution of conventional absorption-based CT, but with a small fraction of the radiation dose.

• These findings support moving toward phase-contrast CT trials in live patients to test clinical effectiveness for breast cancer diagnosis.

Images

• Two 3D tomographic reconstructions of mastectomy samples are shown: one with multifocal invasive papillary carcinoma, and one with invasive lobular carcinoma — illustrating the tumour tissue structure captured by the technique.

Data

• The table and accompanying line graphs report a mean radiological score evaluated across different reconstruction methods (iFBP, SIRT1000, SIRT400), phase-retrieval settings (without/half/full), propagation distances (0.16 m, 1.85 m, 9.31 m), and X-ray energies (32, 35, 38 keV) — generally showing that greater propagation distance and full phase retrieval improve image quality scores.

Poster 4: Canine Radiotherapy Studies

Open

Background

Microbeam Radiation Therapy (MRT) uses an IMBL synchrotron X-ray beams split into an array of microscopic beamlets (in the range of microns). This is unlike conventional, GRID/lattice, or minibeam radiotherapy which use progressively wider beam spacing in the array. A fine spatial fractionation allows very high peak doses while sparing normal tissue, since healthy tissue between beams (we call these the valleys) receives much lower doses and can repair itself.

Beyond direct tumour damage, MRT may also stimulate immune recognition of cancer, disrupt abnormal tumour blood vessels, and boost chemotherapy effectiveness.

Methods

• Trials began with canine osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in 2023, now expanding to soft tissue sarcoma (2025) and in the future to brain cancer

• CT/MRI imaging (performed next door at Monash Biomedical Imaging) identified tumours; treatment plans were made using a modified Varian Eclipse treatment planning software. This incorporated a Monte Carlo dose calculation model, validated on 3D-printed phantoms

• Prescribed doses: ≥100 Gy at microbeam peaks, only ~5 Gy in the valleys

• Treatment was delivered in Hutch 2B at the IMBL, with real-time dose verification via microdiamond/ionisation chamber detectors

• Carboplatin chemotherapy given 30 minutes post-MRT as an adjunct therapy to exploit temporarily increased tumour vascular permeability

• Limbs were positioned identically for imaging and treatment to ensure accuracy

Results

• Total treatment time was under 20 seconds

• Gafchromic film confirmed microbeam pattern was preserved through the leg (entry to exit)

• The case on this poster is "Pickles" whose tumour volume visibly reduced in-field 2–5 months post-treatment, confirmed by contrast-enhanced MRI and external measurement

• Photos show Pickles' skin changes at the treatment site over a 2-month follow-up

Conclusion

Canine trials are ongoing, with promising results informing understanding of MRT's cancer-killing and healthy-tissue-sparing mechanisms — aiming to eventually translate this therapy to human cancer treatment.