Welcome to the Amira-Avizo Software Use Case Gallery

In recent years new methodologies and workflow pipelines for acquiring correlated fluorescence microscopy and volume electron microscopy datasets have been extensively described and made accessible to users of different levels. Post-acquisition image processing, and particularly correlation of the optical and electron data in a single integrated three-dimensional framework can be key for extracting valuable information, especially when imaging large sample volumes such as whole cells or tissu... Read more

The internal skeleton of the nasal cavity is sporadically and often incompletely described for many marsupial species and mammals in general. Here, I provide an anatomical survey of the ethmoid in the skulls of adult marsupials based on examination of computed tomography (CT) imagery of 29 taxa representing all the major extant groups of marsupials. (…) I compared ecological data with the number of ecto- and endoturbinals as a preliminary test to determine whether some of the interspec... Read more

Human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts occasionally present signs of traumatic injuries from weapons, revealing, for example, the degree of interpersonal violence, the type of weapon and the sequence of events of a specific historical context.

Traumatic lesions are generally analyzed using macroscopic and microscopic methods, which are not necessarily integrated in the same study. In this study, we employed a multi-analytical approach to determine i... Read more

X-ray computed tomography (XCT) has been shown to reveal the true extent of ductile damage below the fracture surface of failed test specimens, which is often significantly underestimated when probed using 2D serial sectioning techniques and a microscope, since a single plane of material may only exhibit only a handful of resolvable voids.

In contrast XCT offers the capability to generate large datasets consisting of hundreds, if not thousands, of individually resolvable voids, where e... Read more

Despite advances in imaging, image-based vascular systems biology has remained challenging because blood vessel data are often available only from a single modality or at a given spatial scale, and cross-modality data are difficult to integrate.

Therefore, there is an exigent need for a multimodality pipeline that enables ex vivo vascular imaging with magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography and optical microscopy of the same sample, while permitting imaging with complementary c... Read more

Among natural cellular materials, pomelo peels, having a foam-like hierarchical microstructure, represent an ideal model for developing materials with high energy absorption efficiency. In this work, by combining X-ray tomographic imaging technique and digital volume correlation (DVC), in-situ stepwise uniaxial compression tests were performed to quantify the internal morphological evolution and kinematic responses of pomelo peel samples during compression.

The complex mechanical response of open-cell foams depends strongly on the hierarchy of length scales inherent in them, from engineering-part scale to the ligament scale through the grain scale down to the crystal-lattice scale. A first step toward understanding and predicting the coordinated mechanical response across le... Read more

During the last decades, X-ray (micro-)computed tomography has gained increasing attention for the description of porous skeletal and shell structures of various organism groups. However, their quantitative analysis is often hampered by the difficulty to discriminate cavities and pores within the object from the surrounding region. Herein, we test the ambient occlusion (AO) algorithm and newly implemented optimisations for the segmentation of cavities (implemented in the software Amira). (... Read more

Pigment distributions have a critical role in the corrosion protection properties of organic paint coatings, but they are difficult to image in 3D over statistically significant volumes and at sufficiently high spatial resolutions required for detailed analysis. Here we report, for the first time, large volume analytical serial sectioning tomography of an organic composite coating using a xenon Plasma Focused Ion Beam (PFIB) combined with secondary electron imaging, energy dispersive X-ray (E... Read more

The usefulness of desktop Micro-CT scanners for the study of archaeological artefacts is demonstrated in a non-destructive study of manufacturing methods of Roman and Early Medieval monochrome and polychrome glass beads. Differences in glass colours show up in these scans as differences in attenuation. The presence and distribution of bubbles and various inclusions (metal, opacifier) are also well visible. Shaft shapes and patterns of bubbles inside the glass make it possible in most cases to... Read more

Wind-dispersed plants have evolved ingenious ways to lift their seeds. The common dandelion uses a bundle of drag-enhancing bristles (the pappus) that helps to keep their seeds aloft. This passive flight mechanism is highly effective, enabling seed dispersal over formidable distances; however, the physics underpinning pappus-mediated flight remains unresolved. Here we visualized the flow around dandelion seeds, uncovering an extraordinary type of vortex. This vortex is a ring of recirculating... Read more

3D characterisation of the particle kinematics during loess collapse is performed based on X-ray micro-computed tomography.

Particle displacements and rotations associated with the collapse are determined.

The volumetric strain is shown to be significantly heterogeneous at single-particle scale.

The evolution of particle-to-particle contacts is found to be much more complex than previously stated.

An apparatus is specially designed to perf... Read more

Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels using molten salt media is an attractive alternative to liquid-liquid extraction techniques.

Pyroelectrochemical processing utilizes direct, selective, electrochemical reduction of uranium dioxide, followed by selective electroplating of a uranium metal. Thermodynamic prediction of the electrochemical reduction of UO2 to U in LiCl-KCl eutectic has shown to be a function of the oxide ion activity. The pO2 of the salt may be affected by the microstruc... Read more

Advanced nanotomographic analysis is still far from routine, and a number of challenges remain in data acquisition and post-processing. In this work, we present a number of techniques to improve the quality of the acquired data, together with easy-to-implement methods to obtain “advanced” microstructural quantifications. The techniques are applied to a solid oxide fuel cell cathode of interest to the electrochemistry community, but the methodologies are easily adaptable to a wide range of... Read more

The hot pressing process for fabricating membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) has been widely adopted, yet little is known of its effects on the microstructural properties of the different components of the MEA. In particular, the interaction of the electrolyte, electrode and gas diffusion layer (GDL) due to lamination is difficult to probe as conventional imaging techniques cannot access the internal structure of the MEA. Here, a novel approach is used, which combines characterisation of hot... Read more

The interest in potential applications produced with self-compacting fibre reinforced concrete continues to grow, but in practice, problems associated with an uneven distribution and orientation of fibres in the concrete structure occur. It is not clear what exactly influences uneven distribution of fibres in selfcompacting concrete (SCC) mixtures, especially during the casting and how different factors influence fibre orientation. The objective of this work was to investigate how rheological... Read more

Unlike white and brown adipose tissues, the bone marrow adipocyte (BMA) exists in a microenvironment containing unique populations of hematopoietic and skeletal cells.

To study this microenvironment at the subcellular level, we performed a three-dimensional analysis of the ultrastructure of the BMA niche with focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM). This revealed that BMAs display hallmarks of metabolically active cells including polarized lipid deposits, a dense mitoch... Read more

Our team is developing a modern, cross-disciplinary approach to documentation and preservation of astromaterials, specifically lunar and meteorite samples stored at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility.

Apollo Lunar Sample 60639, collected as part of rake sample 60610 during the 3rd Extra-Vehicular Activity of the Apollo 16 mission in 1972, served as the first NASA preserved lunar sample to be examined by our team in the development of a novel approach to int... Read more

Composite cathodes comprising nanoscale
powders are expected to impart with high specific surface
area and triple phase boundary (TPB) density, which will lead
to better performance.

However, uniformly mixing nanosized heterophase powders remains a challenge due to their high surface energy and thus ease with which they agglomerate into their individual phases during the mixing and sintering
processes. In this study, we successfully synthesized La0.6Sr0.4Co0.2Fe... Read more

Targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy (TRT) using α-particle radiation is a promising approach for treating both large and micrometastatic lesions. Researchers developed prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)–targeted low-molecular-weight agents for 212Pb-based TRT of patients with prostate cancer (PC) by evaluating the matching γ-emitting surrogate.

Targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy using α-particles (α-TRTs), which cause deposition of ionizing radiation of high-linear-ener... Read more