Medical applications of synchrotron radiation at the SYRMEP beamline of ELETTRA

The main purpose of the SYRMEP (SYnchrotron Radiation for MEdical Physics) research team is the investigation and development of innovative techniques for medical imaging. A dedicated beamline has been built at ELETTRA to evaluate the effectiveness of synchrotron-based techniques in medical radiology with particular interest to mammography, and more in general, to the imaging of biological and biomedical samples, either in planar or tomographic set-ups. Taking advantage of the high intensity and high spatial coherence of Synchrotron Radiation (SR), phase sensitive techniques such as Phase Contrast (PhC) and Diffraction Enhanced Imaging (DEI) can be applied. In the present paper, the main characteristics of the beamline and an overview of the results obtained in different contexts of biomedical imaging are presented. Moreover, the status of the project for clinical mammography is outlined.