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Introduction
A physicist with a doctorate (PhD) in biomedical engineering and main scientific interest in X-ray tomographic imaging, in particular X-ray microscopy and phase-contrast imaging. Thereby I’ve specialized in the field of pulmonary imaging, covering experimental design, instrumentation, dosimetry, data acquisition as well as image processing and quantitative 3D image data analysis. My main scientific focus is how to complement methodological expertise with biological and clinical relevance.
Publications
Publications (40)
TOMCAT is a tomographic microscopy beamline at the Swiss Light Source (SLS) of the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) [1]. For almost two decades, TOMCAT has been offering its cutting-edge tomographic microscopy capabilities to various industries in need of non-destructive, non-invasive, volumetric, and functional material characterization beyond what is...
Background And Aims
Root hair emergence is affected by heterogeneities in water availability in the growth medium. Root hairs preferentially emerge into air, whereas their emergence into water is inhibited. Yet, these results were based either on destructive methods or on roots grown on an agar-air interface. Additionally, there is a lack of knowle...
The effect of root hairs on water uptake remains controversial. In particular, the key root hair and soil parameters that determine their importance have been elusive.
We grew maize plants (Zea mays) in microcosms and scanned them using synchrotron‐based X‐ray computed microtomography. By means of image‐based modelling, we investigated the paramete...
Histology is a long standing and well-established gold standard for pathological characterizations. In recent years however, synchrotron radiation-based micro-computed tomography (SRμCT) has become a tool for extending the imaging of two-dimensional thin sections into three-dimensional imaging of tissue blocks, enabling so-called virtual histology...
Root hairs improve plant access to soil resources, especially under edaphic stress (Singh Gahoonia & Nielsen, 2004; Marin et al., 2020; Wissuwa & Kant, 2021). While root shrinkage and the formation of cortical lacunae limit the continuity of the liquid phase at the root-soil interface (Nobel & Cui, 1992; Carminati et al., 2009; Cuneo et al., 2016),...
Background
The evolution of cartilage degeneration is still not fully understood, partly due to its thinness, low radio-opacity and therefore lack of adequately resolving imaging techniques. X-ray phase-contrast imaging (X-PCI) offers increased sensitivity with respect to standard radiography and CT allowing an enhanced visibility of adjoining, low...
Imaging the (sub)micron scale over large areas with high temporal resolution becomes increasingly necessary for the development and investigation of novel materials under realistic operation conditions. Small angle x-ray scattering imaging methods provide micro- and nanoscale structural information of materials. A fundamental shortcoming of such me...
In pulmonary arterial hypertension, plexiform lesions are associated with severe arterial obstruction and right ventricular failure. Exploring their structure and position is crucial for understanding the interplay between hemodynamics and vascular remodeling. The aim of this research was to use synchrotron-based phase contrast micro-CT to study th...
Mechanical ventilation can damage the lungs, a condition called Ventilator-Induced Lung Injury (VILI). However, the mechanisms leading to VILI at the microscopic scale remain poorly understood. Here we investigated the within-tidal dynamics of cyclic recruitment/derecruitment (R/D) using synchrotron radiation phase-contrast imaging (PCI), and the r...
In this article, we present an X-ray tomographic imaging method that is well suited for pulmonary disease studies in animal models to resolve the full pathway from gas intake to gas exchange. Current state-of-the-art synchrotron-based tomographic phase-contrast imaging methods allow for three-dimensional microscopic imaging data to be acquired non-...
Aortic aneurysms and dissections are silent and lethal conditions, whose pathogenesis remains incompletely understood. Although angiotensin II (AngII)-infused ApoE-/- mice have been widely used to study aortic aneurysm and dissection, early morphofunctional alterations preceding the onset of these conditions remain unknown. The goal of this study w...
To comprehend the most detrimental characteristics behind bone fractures, it is key to understand the material and tissue level strain limits and their relation to failure sites. The aim of this study was to investigate the three-dimensional strain distribution and its evolution during loading at the sub-trabecular level in trabecular bone tissue....
Animal models of aortic aneurysm and dissection can enhance our limited understanding of the etiology of these lethal conditions particularly because early-stage longitudinal data are scant in humans. Yet, the pathogenesis of often-studied mouse models and the potential contribution of aortic biomechanics therein remain elusive. In this work, we co...
Insights into the micro- and nano-architecture of materials is crucial for understanding and predicting their macroscopic behaviour. In particular, for emerging applications such as meta-materials, the micrometer scale becomes highly relevant. The micro-architecture of such materials can be tailored to exhibit specific mechanical, optical or electr...
Background:
This study aimed to explore the value of synchrotron-based phase contrast micro-CT in pulmonary vascular pathobiology. The micro-anatomy of the lung is complex with intricate branching patterns. Tissue sections are therefore difficult to interpret. Recruited intrapulmonary bronchopulmonary anastomoses (IBAs) have been described in seve...
Early degenerative changes of articular cartilage are detected using contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) with a cationic contrast agent (CA). However, cationic CA diffusion into degenerated cartilage decreases with proteoglycan depletion and increases with elevated water content, thus hampering tissue evaluation at early diffusion time point...
Dual contrast micro computed tomography (CT) shows potential for detecting articular cartilage degeneration. However, the performance of conventional CT systems is limited by beam hardening, low image resolution (full‐body CT), and long acquisition times (conventional microCT). Therefore, to reveal the full potential of the dual contrast technique...
In computational aortic biomechanics, aortic and arterial tissue are typically modelled as a homogeneous layer, making abstraction not only of the layered structure of intima, media and adventitia but also of the microstructure that exists within these layers. Here, we present a novel method to visualize the microstructure of the tunica media along...
Early diagnosis of acute cartilage injuries enables monitoring of disease progression and improved treatment option planning to prevent post-traumatic osteoarthritis. In contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CECT), the changes in cationic agent diffusion within the tissue reflect cartilage degeneration. The diffusion in degenerated cartilage depen...
In technical systems, static pressure and pressure changes are usually measured with piezoelectric materials or solid membranes. In this paper, we suggest a new biomimetic principle based on thin air layers that can be used to measure underwater pressure changes. Submerged backswimmers (Notonecta sp.) are well known for their ability to retain air...
Synchrotron-based x-ray phase-contrast imaging allows for detailed 3D insight into the microstructure of soft tissue and is increasingly used to improve our understanding of mouse models of cardiovascular disease. Two techniques dominate the field: grating interferometry, with superior density contrast at mid to lower microscopic resolutions, and p...
Lung diseases are a major burden of public health especially in developed countries and therefore continue to be an active interest in preclinical and clinical research. Due to the complex structure and motion of the lung, an in vivo or in situ analysis would be very beneficial. However, this is very challenging for virtually all imaging technologi...
Lungs represent the essential part of the mammalian respiratory system, which is reflected in the fact that lung failure still is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Establishing the connection between macroscopic observations of inspiration and expiration and the processes taking place at the microscopic scale remains c...
Using state-of-the-art X-ray tomographic microscopy we can image lung tissue in three dimensions in intact animals down to a micrometer precision. The structural complexity and hierarchical branching scheme of the lung at this level of details, however, renders the extraction of biologically relevant quantities particularly challenging. We have dev...
The acinus represents the functional unit of the mammalian lung. It is defined as the small tree of gas-exchanging airways, which is fed by the most distal purely conducting airway. Different hypotheses exist on how the fine structure of the acinus changes during ventilation and development. Since in classical 2-dimensional (2D) sections of the lun...
Volumetric datasets with micrometer spatial and sub-second temporal resolutions are nowadays routinely acquired using synchrotron X-ray tomographic microscopy (SRXTM). Although SRXTM technology allows the examination of multiple samples with short scan times, many specimens are larger than the field-of-view (FOV) provided by the detector. The exten...
Time-resolved imaging of dynamic processes, ranging from biological in vivo studies to materials under in situ and in operando conditions, requires a flexible endstation capable of controlling complex components that interact in different configurations and at high speeds. At the X02DA TOMCAT beamline we have recently achieved in situ tomographic m...
A reliable measurement of beam coherence is important for optimal performance of a number of coherence methods being utilized at third-generation synchrotrons and free-electron lasers. Various approaches have been proposed in the past for determining the source size, and hence the degree of coherence; however they often require complex setups with...
A basic prerequisite for in vivo X-ray imaging of the lung is the exact determination of radiation dose. Achieving resolutions of the order of micrometres may become particularly challenging owing to increased dose, which in the worst case can be lethal for the imaged animal model. A framework for linking image quality to radiation dose in order to...