X-rays transformed medicine a century ago by providing a noninvasive way to detect internal structures in the body. Still, they have limitations: They can’t image the body’s soft tissues, except with the use of contrast-enhancing agents that must be swallowed or injected, and their resolution is limited.

But a new approach developed by researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital could dramatically change that, enabling the most detailed images ever—including clear views of soft tissue without any need for contrast agents.

The work was presented by MIT postdoc Shuo Cheng at the recent 13th International Workshop on Micro and Nanotechnology for Power Generation and Energy Conversion Applications (PowerMEMS 2013), held in London.

The new technology “could make X-rays ubiquitous, because of its higher resolution, the fact that the dose would be smaller and the hardware smaller, cheaper, and more capable than current X-rays,” says Luis Velásquez-García, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories and senior author of the PowerMEMS paper.

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