HiP-CT shows lung vessels damaged by Covid-19

The damage to the lungs’ smallest blood vessels was captured using high-energy X-rays emitted by a special particle accelerator, which scanned a range of donated human organs including lungs from a Covid-19 donor.

HiP-CT enables 3D mapping across a range of scales, allowing clinicians to image the whole organ and then zoom down to cellular level. 

The technique uses X-rays supplied by the European Synchrotron particle accelerator in Grenoble, France, which following its recent Extremely Brilliant Source upgrade (ESRF-EBS) now provides the brightest source of X-rays in the world — 100 billion times brighter than a hospital X-ray.

Due to this, researchers can view blood vessels five microns in diameter (a tenth of a diameter of a hair) in an intact human lung. A clinical CT scan only resolves blood vessels that are around 100 times larger, about 1mm in diameter.