FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW CT SCANNER DEVOTED TO HUMAN INNER EAR

Inner ear diseases include not only hearing loss but also equilibrium disorders. In these cases the normal life is seriously affected and simple actions like walking and moving are seriously impaired by the appearing of symptoms like dizziness, nausea, vomit. Imaging the inner ear is a very interesting radiological challenge, in fact present medical CT scanners do not have the spatial resolution necessary to image the fine structures of the inner ear. As a consequence, when inner ear diseases are treated surgically, the physician has to proceed to the operation without any trustable image guidance. In addition, without good imaging, it is not possible to follow up the therapeutical effects of medications. Therefore a dedicated and performing CT system for inner ear imaging would be extremely useful also to avoid unnecessary surgeries. In the framework of a research project funded by the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics we studied this issue and performed an experiment at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility to determine whether, under ideal conditions (parallel and monochromatic X-ray beam, high resolution detector), it was possible to obtain tomographic images of the inner ear with satisfactory resolution and contrast. This experiment can be considered as a "reference benchmark" for the CT imaging of the human ear, a target which a new CT scanner devoted to middle and inner ear should approach.