3D image – Page 2 – Lightsources.org

First ever images of fuel debris fallout particles from Fukushima

2019/03/072019/03/09

Unique synchrotron visualisation techniques offer new forensic insights into the provenance of radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear accident to understand the sequence of events related to the accident.

In April 2017, a joint team comprising the University of Bristol, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) and Diamond, the UK’s national synchrotronlight source, undertook the first experiment of its kind to be performed at Diamond. A small radioactive particle (450μm x 280μm x 250 μm) from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in 2011 underwent a comprehensive and independent analysis of its internal structure and 3D elemental distribution, to establish the source of the material and the potential environmental risks associated with it.

Image: Fukushima Particles research group (L-R): Cristoph Rau (I13), Yukihiko Satou, (researcher from the Collaborative Laboratories for Advanced Decommissioning Science, Japan Atomic Energy Agency), with Tom Scott and Peter Martin (University of Bristol).

Secrets of the deadly white-tail virus revealed

2018/12/112018/12/12

The inner workings of a lethal giant freshwater prawn virus have been revealed by an international team of researchers using data gathered at Diamond Light Source. The results reveal a possible new class of virus and presents the prospect of tackling a disease that can devastate prawn farms around the world.

The detailed structure of a virus that can devastate valuable freshwater prawn fisheries has been revealed by an international team using image data collected in the Electron Bio-Imaging Centre (eBIC) based at Diamond Light Source. The researchers produced high-resolution images of virus like particles, VLP’s, composed of virus shell proteins which they compared with lower resolution images of the complete virus purified from prawn larvae. They found strong similarities between the two suggesting that the more detailed VLP images are a good representation of the intact virus. This research, exposing the inner workings of the MrNV, could make it easier to develop ways of combating the economically important disease, but also suggests that it belongs in a new, separate, group of nodaviruses.
The researchers used the rapidly developing technique of cryo-electron microscopy, cryoEM, which has the ability to produce very high-resolution images of frozen virus particles. Images so detailed that the positions of individual atoms could be inferred. Recent breakthroughs in this technique have transformed the study of relatively large biological complexes like viruses allowing researchers to determine their structures comparatively quickly. The data to produce the MrNV structure described here was captured in two days at the eBIC facility.

Image: 3D model of the MrNV
Credit: Dr David Bhella

Scientists produce 3-D chemical maps of single bacteria

2018/11/162018/11/19

Researchers at NSLS-II used ultrabright x-rays to generate 3-D nanoscale maps of a single bacteria’s chemical composition with unparalleled spatial resolution.

Scientists at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory—have used ultrabright x-rays to image single bacteria with higher spatial resolution than ever before. Their work, published in Scientific Reports, demonstrates an x-ray imaging technique, called x-ray fluorescence microscopy (XRF), as an effective approach to produce 3-D images of small biological samples.

“For the very first time, we used nanoscale XRF to image bacteria down to the resolution of a cell membrane,” said Lisa Miller, a scientist at NSLS-II and a co-author of the paper. “Imaging cells at the level of the membrane is critical for understanding the cell’s role in various diseases and developing advanced medical treatments.”
The record-breaking resolution of the x-ray images was made possible by the advanced capabilities of the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe (HXN) beamline, an experimental station at NSLS-II with novel nanofocusing optics and exceptional stability.
“HXN is the first XRF beamline to generate a 3-D image with this kind of resolution,” Miller said.

Image: NSLS-II scientist Tiffany Victor is shown at the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe, where her team produced 3-D chemical maps of single bacteria with nanoscale resolution.

New approach to breast cancer detection

2018/10/032018/10/04

Phase contrast tomography shows great promise in early stages of study and is expected to be tested on first patients by 2020.

An expert group of imaging scientists in Sydney and Melbourne are using the Imaging and Medical Beamline (IMBL) at the Australian Synchrotron as part of ongoing research on an innovative 3D imaging technique to improve the detection and diagnosis of breast cancer.

The technique, known as in-line phase-contrast computed tomography (PCT), has shown advantages over 2D mammography with conventional X-rays by producing superior quality images of dense breast tissue with similar or below radiation dose.
Research led by Prof Patrick Brennan of the University of Sydney and Dr Tim Gureyev at the University of Melbourne with funding from the NHMRC and the support of clinicians in Melbourne including breast surgeon Dr Jane Fox, is now focused on demonstrating the clinical usefulness of the technique.
Together with Associate Professor Sarah Lewis and Dr SeyedamirTavakoli Taba from the University of Sydney heading clinical implementation, the technique is expected to be tested on the first patients at the Australian Synchrotron by 2020.

Image: CT reconstruction of 3D image of mastectomy sample revealing invasive carcinoma

Diamond shines its light on moon rocks

2018/10/022018/10/03

Nearly 50 years after our first steps on the Moon, rock samples from the Apollo missions still have a lot to tell us about lunar formation, and Earth’s volcanoes.

An international collaboration involving scientists in Tenerife, the US and the UK, are using Diamond, the UK’s national synchrotron light source, to investigate Moon rocks recovered during the Apollo Missions in a brand new way.
Dr. Matt Pankhurst of Instituto Volcanológico de Canarias and NASA lunar principle investigator explains: “We have used a new imaging technique developed at Diamond to carry out 3D mapping of olivine – a common green mineral found in the Earth’s sub-surface and in these Moon rock samples. These maps will be used to improve understanding of the Moon’s ancient volcanic systems and help to understand active geological processes here on Earth.
With this new technique, our team may be able to recover from these Moon rock samples information such as what the patterns of magma flow within the volcanic system were, what the magma storage duration was like, and potentially even identify eruption triggers. The data will be analysed using state-of-the-art diffusion modelling which will establish the history of individual crystals.”

>Read more on the Diamond Light Source website

Image: Dr Matt Pankhurst studies one of the moon rock samples from the Apollo 12 & 15 missions at Diamond Light Source

Unprecedented 3D images of neurons in healthy and epileptic brains

2018/08/242018/10/08

Results open new perspectives for the study of neurodevelopment and neurodegenerative diseases.

A comprehensive understanding of the brain, its development, and eventual degeneration, depends on the assessment of neuronal number, spatial organization, and connectivity. However, the study of the brain architecture at the level of individual cells is still a major challenge in neuroscience.
In this context, Matheus de Castro Fonseca, from the Brazilian Biosciences National Laboratory (LNBio), and collaborators [1] used the facilities of the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS) to obtain, for the first time, three-dimensional images in high resolution of part of the neuronal circuit, observed directly in the brain and with single cell resolution.

The researchers used the IMX X-Ray Microtomography beamline, in combination with the Golgi-Cox mercury-based impregnation protocol, which proved to be an efficient non-destructive tool for the study of the nervous system. The combination made it possible to observe the points of connectivity and the detailed morphology of a region of the brain, without the need for tissue slicing or clearing.
The mapping of neurons in healthy and unhealthy tissues should improve the research in neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental diseases. As an example of this possibility, the work presents, for the first time in 3D, the neuronal death in an animal model of epilepsy.

The researchers are now working to extend the technique to animal models of Parkinson’s disease. The intention is to better understand the cellular mechanisms involved in the onset and progression of the disease. In the future, with the inauguration of the new Brazilian synchrotron light source, Sirius, the researchers believe that it will be possible to obtain images at the subcellular level, that is, images of the interior of the neurons.

Image: X-ray microtomography of the cerebral cortex showing the segmentation of individual neurons. Each color represents a single neuron or a group of neurons.

World record: Fastest 3D tomographic images at BESSY II

2018/08/082018/08/09

An HZB team has developed an ingenious precision rotary table at the EDDI beamline at BESSY II and combined it with particularly fast optics.

This enabled them to document the formation of pores in grains of metal during foaming processes at 25 tomographic images per second – a world record.

The quality of materials often depends on the manufacturing process. In casting and welding, for example, the rate at which melts solidify and the resulting microstructure of the alloy is important. With metallic foams as well, it depends on exactly how the foaming process takes place. To understand these processes fully requires fast sensing capability. The fastest 3D tomographic images to date have now been achieved at the BESSY II X-ray source operated by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin.

Dr. Francisco Garcia-Moreno and his team have designed a turntable that rotates ultra-stably about its axis at a constant rotational speed. This really depends on the highest precision: Any tumbling around the rotation axis or even minimal deviations in the rotation speed would prevent the reliable calculation of the 3D tomography. While commercially available solutions costing several hundred thousand euros allow up to 20 tomographic images per second, the Berlin physicists were able to develop a significantly cheaper solution that is even faster. ”My two doctoral students at the Technische Universität Berlin produced the specimen holders themselves on the lathe”, says Garcia-Moreno, who not only enjoys working out solutions to tricky technical problems, but possesses a lot of craftsman skill himself as well. Additional components were produced in the HZB workshop. In addition, Garcia-Moreno and his colleague Dr. Catalina Jimenez had already developed specialized optics for the fast CMOS camera during the preliminary stages of this work that allows even for simultaneous diffraction. This makes it possible to record approximately 2000 projections per second, from which a total of 25 three-dimensional tomographic images can be created.

Image: Experimental setup is composed of a fast-rotation stage, an IR heating lamp (temperature up to 800 °C), a BN crucible transparent to X-rays, a 200-μm thick LuAG:Ce scintillator, a white-beam optical system, and a PCO Dimax CMOS camera. The incident (red) and transmitted (green) X-ray beams as well as the light path from the scintillator to the camera (blue) are shown.
Credit: HZB

3D X-ray tomography scoops up information about ice cream

2018/07/192018/07/24

There’s nothing quite like an ice cream on a hot day, and eating it before it melts too much is part of the fun.

Ice cream is a soft solid, and its appeal is a complex combination of ‘mouthfeel’, taste and appearance, which are all strongly affected by the underlying microstructure. We know that changes in the microstructure of ice cream occur at storage temperatures above -30°C, so they will occur during shipping, and in freezers at the supermarket and at home. In their ongoing quest to create the perfect ice cream, an international team of researchers brought samples to Diamond to investigate the temperature dependence of these microstructural changes, and the underlying physical mechanisms that control microstructural stability.

Advanced imaging technique used to study triggers of tree mortality

2018/06/292018/07/04

Researchers are using advanced imaging technologies similar to those used in hospitals, including micro-computed tomography on the Imaging and Medical beamline (IMBL) at the Australian Synchrotron, to determine how vulnerable our trees are to drought and heatwaves.
A new scientific review published In Nature outlines progress towards understanding the likely risks from droughts and heatwaves that combine to kill millions of trees around the world with spectacular effects on the environment.

Recent drought and heatwave conditions in northern Australia have killed more than 7000ha of mangrove forests, leaving these essential ecosystems stark, grey skeletons of trees. In California, the prolonged drought period has killed more than 100 million trees that increase the intensity of wildfires and impact on the region’s beauty, tourism and environmental health.
Dead trees, of course, cannot store carbon out of the air and the enormous numbers of dead trees release large quantities of stored carbon back into the air as they are burned or decay, further amplifying the effects of rising carbon dioxide.

Image: IMBL robot positions the tree for imaging.

A surprising twist on skyrmions

2018/06/14

Magnetic tomography has been used to reconstruct a tornado-like 3D magnetic skyrmion structure.

Vortex structures are common in nature, reaching from swirls in our morning coffee to spiral galaxies in the universe. Vortices are been best known from fluid dynamics. Take the example of a tornado. Air circulates around an axis, forming a swirl, and once formed, the twisted air parcels can move, deform, and interact with their environment without disintegrating. A skyrmion is the magnetic version of a tornado which is obtained by replacing the air parcels that make up the tornado by magnetic spins, and by scaling the system down to the nanometre scale. Once formed, the ensemble of twisted spins can also move, deform, and interact with their environment without breaking up ‒ the ideal property for information carriers for memory and logic devices.

What makes a tornado stable is not only coming from its twist, but also due to its three-dimensional properties, i.e., the wind current has extra twist along the column of turbulent flow. This leads to a tight bundling of the vortex sheets at different heights along the tornado column. Similarly, such a 3D structure can also occur in magnetic skyrmions, guaranteeing their topological stability. Up to now, skyrmions have been most commonly treated as two-dimensional objects, and their exciting tornado-like structure remained unexplored. In fact, the 3D characterization of magnetic structures is a rather challenging task. A team of researchers, led by the University of Oxford and Diamond Light Source, have used the energy-dependence of resonant elastic X-ray scattering (REXS) on beamline I10 at Diamond to measure the microscopic depth dependence of ‘skyrmion tornados’ in Cu₂OSeO₃. In their work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they reveal a continuous change from Néel-type winding at the surface to Bloch-type winding in the bulk with increasing depth. This not only demonstrates the power of REXS for microscopic studies of surface-induced reconstructions of magnetic order, but also reveals the hidden energetics that makes magnetic skyrmions such a stable state – a crucial finding for skyrmion device engineering.

Figure: Illustration of a ‘Skyrmion tornado’. The skyrmion order changes from Néel-type at the surface to Bloch-type deeper in the sample. On the right hand side, the corresponding stereographic projections of these two boundary skyrmion patterns are shown.

Synchrotron X-rays reveal identity of 1.5 million-year-old Tuscan big cat

2018/05/292018/05/31

The identity of a mysterious fossil felid found in central Italy has been revealed thanks to synchrotron techniques.

Scientists used X-ray tomography to virtually extract the fossil from its rock encasing and describe decisive anatomical details for the first time. Previously thought to be an extinct Eurasian jaguar, this new study concluded by identifying the felid as Acinonyx pardinensis, one of the most intriguing extinct carnivores of the Old World Plio-Pleistocene. The study is published in Scientific Reports.

The team of physicists and palaeontologists from the University of Perugia, the University of Verona and the University of Rome Sapienza, in collaboration with the European Synchrotron, ESRF, scanned the partial skull of the specimen, still embedded in the rock. The analysis of images and 3D models obtained revealed a mosaic of cheetah-like teeth and Panthera-like features leading to a reconsideration of the ecological role of this species.

Image: Dawid Iurino with the Acinonyx pardinensis skull from Monte Argentario, on the set-up of ESRF ID17 beamline.
Credit: Marco Cherin

New high-precision instrument enables rapid measurements of protein crystals

2018/05/292018/05/31

A team of scientists and engineers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new scientific instrument that enables ultra-precise and high-speed characterization of protein crystals at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)—a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven, which generates high energy x-rays that can be harnessed to probe the protein crystals. Called the FastForward MX goniometer, this advanced instrument will significantly increase the efficiency of protein crystallography by reducing the run time of experiments from hours to minutes.

Protein crystallography is an essential research technique that uses x-ray diffraction for uncovering the 3D structures of proteins and other complex biological molecules, and understanding their function within our cells. Using this knowledge about the basic structure of life, scientists can advance drug design, improve medical treatments, and unravel other environmental and biochemical processes governing our everyday lives.

>Read more on the NSLS-II website

Image: Yuan Gao, Wuxian Shi, Evgeny Nazaretski, Stuart Myers, Weihe Xu and, Martin Fuchs designed and implemented the new goniometer scanner system for ultra-fast and efficient serial protein crystallography at the Frontier Microfocusing Macromolecular Crystallography (FMX) beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source II.

Taking additive manufacturing’s heart beat

2018/05/212018/05/22

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, builds objects by adding layers and it is emerging as a more flexible and reliable way of manufacturing complex structures in the aerospace, engineering and biomedical industries. A British team is at the ESRF’s ID19 to see into the heart of the process and understand it.

“I would not want to ship this equipment on an aeroplane”, Chu Lun Alex Leung said, scientist from the University of Manchester. “It was too precious to leave it in the hands of third parties”, he added. Instead of coming to the ESRF by aeroplane, Leung and his colleagues endured the 12-hour drive in a rental van all the way from Oxfordshire (UK) to the ESRF to make sure their unique equipment arrived safely.

Leung was referring to the laser additive manufacturing (LAM) process replicator, or LAMPR for short, a machine himself and colleagues at the Research Complex at Harwell have developed that 3D prints polymers, metals and ceramics while ESRF’s X-rays probe the heart of the process – the melting and solidification of powders to form complex 3D printed components.

Image: The team on the beamline, next to the laser additive manufacturing (LAM) process replicator. Front row: Margie P. Olbinado, Yunhui Chen. Back row: Sam Tammas-Williams, Lorna Sinclair, Peter D. Lee, Chu lun alex Leung, Samuel Clark, Sebastian Marussi.
Credit: C.Argoud

A new Polarisation Analyser, and the benefits of 3D printing

2018/04/282018/05/02

The I16 beamline at Diamond is dedicated to the study of advanced materials using X-ray diffraction; part of this process is to use a device, known as a polarisation analyser (PA) that can analyse magnetic scattering from samples. Magnetic scattering is different to, and weaker than, normal X-ray scattering and analysis of the polarisation of this scattering can be used to gain insights into the magnetic properties of materials. Researchers can use this information to determine details of the 3D structure of the sample material.

The design of the PA includes an assembly of vacuum chambers, sets of slits to remove unwanted scattering and various detectors, arranged to rotate about different axes. Researchers use data collected from the detectors as they are moved and rotated to build up information on the polarisation of the scattering.

Image: extract of the polarisation analyser; to watch the video “The motion of the main axes of the polarisation analyser”, please have a look here.

Shedding new light on laser additive manufacturing

2018/04/102018/04/23

Additive manufacturing (AM, also known as 3D printing) allows us to create incredibly complex shapes, which would not be possible using traditional manufacturing techniques. However, objects created using AM have different properties from traditional manufacturing routes, which is sometimes a disadvantage.

Laser additive manufacturing (LAM) uses a laser to fuse together metallic, ceramic or other powders into complex 3D shapes, layer by layer. The cooling rates are extremely rapid, and since they are unlike conventional processes we don’t know the optimal conditions to obtain the best properties, delaying the uptake of LAM in the production of safety-critical engineering structures, such as turbine blades, energy storage and biomedical devices. We need a method to see inside the process of LAM to better understand and optimise the laser-matter interaction and powder consolidation mechanisms.

Based in the Research Complex at Harwell, a team of researchers have worked with scientists at I12, the Joint Engineering Environment Processing (JEEP) beamline and the Central Laser Facility to build a laser additive manufacturing machine which operates on a beamline, allowing you to see into the heart of the process, revealing the underlying physical phenomena during LAM.

Picture: The Additive Manufacturing Team from the Research Complex at Harwell on the Joint Engineering Environment Processing (JEEP, I12) beamline. The Laser Additive Manufacturing Process Replicator (or LAMPR) on the right is used to reveal the underlying physical phenomena during LAM.

The early bird got to fly: Archaeopteryx was an active flyer

2018/03/122018/03/14

Was Archaeopteryx capable of flying, and if so, how?

The question of whether the Late Jurassic dino-bird Archaeopteryx was an elaborately feathered ground dweller, a glider, or an active flyer has fascinated palaeontologists for decades. Valuable new information obtained with state-of-the-art synchrotron microtomography at the ESRF, the European Synchrotron (Grenoble, France), allowed an international team of scientists to answer this question in Nature Communications. The wing bones of Archaeopteryx were shaped for incidental active flight, but not for the advanced style of flying mastered by today’s birds.

Was Archaeopteryx capable of flying, and if so, how? Although it is common knowledge that modern-day birds descended from extinct dinosaurs, many questions on their early evolution and the development of avian flight remain unanswered. Traditional research methods have thus far been unable to answer the question whether Archaeopteryx flew or not. Using synchrotron microtomography at the ESRF’s beamline ID19 to probe inside Archaeopteryx fossils, an international team of scientists from the ESRF, Palacký University, Czech Republic, CNRS and Sorbonne University, France, Uppsala University, Sweden, and Bürgermeister-Müller-Museum Solnhofen, Germany, shed new light on this earliest of birds.

Image: The Munich specimen of the transitional bird Archaeopteryx. It preserves a partial skull (top left), shoulder girdle and both wings slightly raised up (most left to center left), the ribcage (center), and the pelvic girdle and both legs in a “cycling” posture (right); all connected by the vertebral column from the neck (top left, under the skull) to the tip of the tail (most right). Imprints of its wing feathers are visible radiating from below the shoulder and vague imprints of the tail plumage can be recognised extending from the tip of the tail.
Credits: ESRF/Pascal Goetgheluck