Synchrotron X-ray Tomography

Synchrotron X-ray Phase Contrast micro-tomography, as implemented at the TOMCAT beamline (PSI), provide essential and unique 3D reconstructions of complete hearts (see figure) for understanding cardiac microstructure and its influencing factors, both on small animals or human fetal hearts. The aim of our current Heart Imaging Project is to quantify cardiac structures and tissues for the first time at micrometre scale, non-destructively, without the use of contrast agents and in 3D.

The main goal of this project is to propose X-ray phase contrast imaging as a fast complementary cost-effective non-destructive 3D quantitative approach for diagnosis in human EMBs and full thickness samples. Synchrotron propagation-based phase contrast imaging is used in order to identify meaningful markers at different stages of pathological remodelling and thus provide a detailed characterization of normal/abnormal tissue samples. This information will be useful for a future implementation of the techniques in the clinics, potentially by means of lab-source based grating interferometry.

The goal of this project is to implement a PIHS at the TOMCAT beamline, which will allow to dynamically study the heart, without the complications that an in vivo experiment might introduce. Such implementation includes the development of hardware for the experimental setup, as well as the design of acquisition protocols, image reconstruction and image processing, which are challenging in fast dynamical acquisitions due to reduced signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). These developments will be used to investigate global heart behavior and analyse cardiomyocyte aggregates orientation evolution during the heartbeat.

The global energy system relies strongly on fossil fuels. Their expected reduced availability and detrimental environmental impact call for alternative energy solutions. Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells (PEFC) are a promising technology for future energy sources, especially in decarbonizing the mobility sector.  The aim of this project is to develop sub-second tomographic microscopy for PEFC in order to detect the liquid water dynamics in the gas diffusion layers (GDL), the key component regulating water management during cell operation.

At modern third generation synchrotron sources, voxel sizes in the micrometer range are routinely achieved. However, isotropic 100 nm barrier is reached and surpassed by only a few instruments. At the TOMCAT beamline of the Swiss Light Source, the multimodal endstation (which offers tomographic capabilities in the micron range) is equipped with a full field, hard X-ray nanoscope. The ongoing efforts aim to further improve the hard components (optics and setup versatility) as well as data acquisition speed, spatial resolution and sensitivity.

Illuminating the microscopic origins of material behavior reveals new pathways for architected design and tests theories on the grounds of experimental evidence. The combined effort to elucidate the evolving 3D microstructure and measure relevant macroscopic forces and strains, which we refer to as Tomo-Rheoscopy, reflects an emerging interest in many scientific or industrial domains to establish an understanding across material length scales. We aim to integrate state of the art mechanical testing protocols with dynamic tomography at the TOMCAT beamline for this purpose.

Despite extensive research, a detailed understanding of the middle ear’s physiology and in-depth understanding of the mechanisms of sound transmission remain unknown to date. To overcome the limitations to which the golden standard techniques, used to investigate the human middle ear, are subject to, the TOMCAT beamline provides advanced and unique capabilities to meet the spatial and temporal resolution requirements to study the micromotions of the human ossicles in a non-destructive manner.