Putting the infrared heat on X-rays
Service, R.F.
Science 279(5347): 33
1998
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 9441406 Document Number: 492871
In this issue, a team led by Bernard Kippelen and Nassar Peyghambarian of the University of Arizona in Tucson and Seth Marder of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena reports on a light-sensitive polymer that might allow infrared light to replace X rays for medical imaging. Doctors would like to retire X rays because their energetic beams can damage DNA, posing a small risk of cancer. Infrared light, in contrast, can pass through tissue safely, but researchers require a simple way to construct an image from the few infrared photons that pass straight through tissue without becoming dispersed. The new polymer can change its optical characteristics in response to a subtle play of light, resulting in a pattern termed a hologram, from which a 3-D image of the tissue can be rebuilt. Until now, separating the photons that travel straight from the dissipated stragglers to make an image has needed awkward gas-, liquid-, or crystal-based detectors, but the new polymers are easy to use and inexpensive to process into film.