The new Micro Computed Tomography (MCT) beamline is the first instrument to become operational as part of the $94 million Project BRIGHT program, which will see the completion of eight new beamlines at ANSTO’s Australian Synchrotron.
The BRIGHT beamlines greatly expand the investigational power and throughput of the Australian Synchrotron with new capabilities not covered by existing instruments.
Despite a series of setbacks and delays due to COVID-19, a team of instrument scientists, engineers, project officers, and technicians achieved first light on MCT on 21 November 2021 at 8:32 pm.
It is a significant technical achievement that is captured and recorded for posterity with a black and white image of the ‘beam’, which means the synchrotron light has been successfully directed from the main ring to the new beamline.
Micro-CT uses X-rays produced by the Australian Synchrotron to reveal a detailed picture of the inside of an object, slice by slice, non-destructively. The instrument produces a series of projected images captured sequentially while the sample is rotated. Using high-performance computing infrastructure and software, a three-dimensional object can be reconstructed from the projected images.
Read more on the ANSTO website
Image: (left-to-right) Chris Hall (IMBL), Gary Ruben (Scientific Computing), Tingting Feng (Scientific Computing), Daniel Häusermann (IMBL), Andrew Stevenson (MCT), Anton Maksimenko (IMBL), Adam Walsh (MCT), Benedicta Arhatari (MCT), Haopeng Shen (CSIRO user), Sherry Mayo (CSIRO user), Matthew Cameron (IMBL)