UNC Featured KEEN Student Development Grant Team received FDA Approval

The UNC KEEN Program partnered with the Office of Undergraduate Research Consultant Team program to offer a $1,500 student supplement for projects that foster curiosity, connections, and creating value.  Undergraduate students, Nikhil Kabilan, Korina Kempthorn, and Alex Morrow, contributed to these efforts as part of the UNC KEEN Student Development grants. UNC recently featured one of the 2020-2021 awardees, who have recently received FDA approval for a 3D X-ray device called PORTRAY, developed by UNC-Chapel Hill professors Otto Zhou and Jianping Lu.  

The goal of the project was to research and optimize a carbon nanotube cone-beam CT (CBCT) in partnership with the UNC Dental School to produce an available and efficient device for dental imaging. The students analyzed and optimized the collimation, reconstruction software, and geometry of a prototype cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) device using a carbon nanotube-based x-ray source.  

The students geometrically configured the collimator that controlled the x-ray beam to reduce scatter. They gained insight into detector contortion and they improved the quality of image reconstruction. The students created a schematic of the collimator. For future work, the students will continue to collect measurements of the vertical position of the detector, and they will further characterize this prototype design to determine the feasibility of multi-beam carbon nanotube x-ray sources. 

To learn more details, see the KEEN Student Development site.