Articles you may be interested inAn evaluation of high energy bremsstrahlung background in point-projection x-ray radiography experimentsa) Rev. Sci. Instrum. 83, 10E528 (2012); 10.1063/1.4738649 High-energy, high-resolution x-ray imaging on the Trident short-pulse laser facilitya) Rev. Sci. Instrum. 79, 10E905 (2008); 10.1063/1.2965012Cross-sectional insight in the water evolution and transport in polymer electrolyte fuel cellsThe authors report on in situ investigations of liquid water evolution and transport in an undisturbed operating fuel cell at the microscopic level. Synchrotron x-ray radiography enhances the spatial resolution by two orders of magnitude compared to the state-of-the-art techniques in this field. The primary spots of liquid water formation, their growth, and transport inside the porous gas diffusion material were analyzed; correlations between operating conditions and the dynamics of droplet formation are described. Previous findings from modeling and simulation approaches are confirmed and the applicability for the description of in situ processes of a recently proposed model has been proven.

Tomographic images are often superimposed by so called ring artefacts. Ring artefacts are concentric rings in the images around the center of rotation of the tomographic setup caused e.g. by differences in the individual pixel response of the detector. They complicate the post processing of the data, i.e. the segmentation of individual image information. Hence, for a quantitative analysis of the tomographic images a significant reduction of these artefacts is essential. In this paper, a simple but efficient method to eliminate such artefacts during the reconstruction is proposed.

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Zn-MnO 2 alkaline batteries were investigated in-situ at different stages of electric discharge by synchrotron tomography with monochromatic X-rays and by neutron tomography. The spatial distribution and the changes in the morphology of different components of a battery caused by the reduction of MnO 2 , the dissolution of Zn and the nucleation and growth of ZnO are investigated with high spatial resolution around several µm with X-rays. Neutron tomography is used to monitor the changes in the spatial distribution of hydrogen in the MnO 2 matrix and provides complementary information about the process.

Current light microscopic methods such as serial sectioning, confocal microscopy or multiphoton microscopy are severely limited in their ability to analyse rather opaque biological structures in three dimensions, while electron optical methods offer either a good three-dimensional topographic visualization (scanning electron microscopy) or high-resolution imaging of very thin samples (transmission electron microscopy). However, sample preparation commonly results in a significant alteration and the destruction of the three-dimensional integrity of the specimen. Depending on the selected photon energy, the interaction between X-rays and biological matter provides semi-transparency of the specimen, allowing penetration of even large specimens. Based on the projection-slice theorem, angular projections can be used for tomographic imaging. This method is well developed in medical and materials science for structure sizes down to several micrometres and is considered as being non-destructive. Achieving a spatial and structural resolution that is sufficient for the imaging of cells inside biological tissues is difficult due to several experimental conditions. A major problem that cannot be resolved with conventional X-ray sources are the low differences in density and absorption contrast of cells and the surrounding tissue. Therefore, X-ray monochromatization coupled with a sufficiently high photon flux and coherent beam properties are key requirements and currently only possible with synchrotron-produced X-rays. In this study, we report on the three-dimensional morphological characterization of articular cartilage using synchrotron-generated X-rays demonstrating the spatial distribution of single cells inside the tissue and their quantification, while comparing our findings to conventional histological techniques.