Kaye Morgan

Kaye Morgan works with the x-ray imaging group in the School of Physics and Astronomy in the Faculty of Science at Monash University as a Research Fellow, recently awarded a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council (ARC). Previous to this, Kaye was supported by a Veski Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, spending time at the Technische Universität München where she holds a Hans Fischer Fellowship.  This followed an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, which she received in the year following her PhD. 

Kaye works in the field of phase contrast x-ray imaging (PCXI), developing new methods for sensitively imaging soft tissue at high resolution. Phase contrast x-ray imaging utilises changes in the x-ray phase rather than the x-ray intensity, revealing soft tissue structures like the airways that are not seen in conventional x-ray imaging. Dr Morgan is working both on developing and extending these methods and on applying them to medical research questions. Imaging is performed largely at the SPring-8 synchrotron, the Australian Synchrotron and the Munich Compact Light Source.  

• Single-grid PCXI
  While many methods of PCXI offer either speed for dynamic imaging or high sensitivity in detecting subtle sample features, it is difficult to achieve both. Motivated by the challenge of imaging the liquid lining of the airways in real time, Dr Morgan developed single-grid imaging to realise sensitive high-speed x-ray movies (Optics Letters, Optics Express, Optics Letters, Optics Express).  She also demonstrated that this approach does not require a perfect grid pattern and can use the speckle pattern seen when illuminating a piece of paper (Applied Physics Letters, Journal of Synchrotron Radiation).
  
  
• The application of PCXI to Respiratory Research
  In collaboration with the Women's and Children's Hospital and the University of Adelaide, propagation-based and single-grid PCXI has been applied to study the airways affected by Cystic Fibrosis and the effectiveness for CF treatments (Journal of Anatomy, European Journal of Radiology). This has included imaging the clearance of debris along the airway surface (J. of Synchrotron Radiation, Respiratory Research), the delivery of treatments (Journal of Aerosol Medicine and Pulmonary Drug Delivery), motion of the lungs (Biomedical Optics Express, Scientific Reports) and treatment-induced changes in the airway surface liquid (PLOS ONE, AJRCCM).  This work has been covered in the media, including physicsworld and sciencedaily.
  
  
• Measuring and modelling coherent x-ray imaging set-ups
  Optimisation of PCXI is best performed with an accurate numerical model of an x-ray source and imaging set-up, requiring both reasonable models and careful measurements of the source characteristics.  Kaye worked with Sarah Irvine to look in particular at the effect of a diffuser, commonly used to even out illumination, with some consequences in terms of spatial coherence (Optics Express, Optics Communications). In addition, Dr Morgan has compared numerical models for x-ray wavefield propagation (e.g. the projection approximation) with exact solutions, plotting Cornu spiral-like phase contrast signatures in the Argand plane (Optics Express, Optics Communications).
  
  

• Translating techniques to compact x-ray sources for wider adoption
  Kaye is also looking at the translation of PCXI techniques from synchrotron sources to laboratory sources, for research accessibility and eventual clinical availability.  This work has used both the Excillum liquid metal jet source and the world's first source driven by Inverse Compton Scattering, the Munich Compact Light Source (Physics in Medicine and Biology, Scientific Reports, Scientific Reports).

You can watch a brief description of her research here and find more detail here.