Preliminary results from a novel CCD-based imaging system for biomedical applications

A digital autoradiography system, incorporating a cooled scientific charge coupled device (CCD) is in development at the Physics Department of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR). The ICR system is designed to image /spl beta/-particles and low energy X-rays from radiolabelled biological tissue samples, utilising direct irradiation of the CCD. This prototype system displays position resolution of 30 /spl mu/m over an area of /spl sim/4 cm/sup 2/. System response is linear over a dynamic range of at least 10/sup 4/, with signal to noise ratio approaching 300. The different components of system noise are discussed,along with the optimisation of integration times to minimise their effect. The potential application of the system to "multimodality" imaging-the automatic registration of optical and radionuclide images of a stained tissue sample-is discussed.