Micro-CT is a useful tool for enabling the digital imaging of whole objects in three dimensions. The power of micro-CT to visualize internal features without disarticulation makes it particularly valuable for the study of botanical specimens. Botanists can study anatomical structures in 3D and determine key characteristics such as cell size, tissue composition, and architecture that is important for modeling water transport, nutrients and gases in plants. In addition, it is useful for the study of museum collections that house millions of physical specimens documenting the spatio-temporal patterns of life.
Micro-CT imaging of branch–stem attachments of the dragon tree Dracaena marginata. The location of each slice within the sample is given by the dashed blue line. All specimens were imaged using a Bruker SkyScan 1272 µ-CT. Hesse, Linnea, et al, Structural and functional imaging of large and opaque plant specimens, Journal of Experimental Botany, Volume 70, Issue 14, 1 July 2019.
Structural and functional imaging of large and opaque plant specimens
Micro-CT 3D imaging techniques offer excellent methods for spatially resolving the form–structure–function relationships in plants. Evaluating these relationships allows researchers to more fully understand the mechanical significance and interconnectedness of each level of hierarchy. Micro-CT allows for whole mounted imaging, where the structural integrity of the biological sample is not physically damaged during image acquisition, and samples ranging from macroscopic levels to the ultrastructural level (nanometers) can be studied.
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X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) of pyrite-permineralized fruits and seeds from the London Clay Formation (Ypresian) conserved in silicone oil: a critical evaluation
“The London Clay Formation exposed in southeast England contains one of the most diverse early Eocene biotas, with fossils of marine and terrestrial life. Plants are the most common fossils from the terrestrial realm.” The plant fossils from the London Clay Formation are currently stored in silicone oil to limit or prevent problems of decomposition, but specimens stored in silicone oil can be difficult to provide on loan and silicone oil storage is not condusive to light microscope observation and photography. Micro-CT of specimens, without removing them from the silicone oil, provides a method that mitigates these issues and will help meet the goal of making the information from these specimens widely available.
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Seeing space: visualization and quantification of plant leaf structure using X-ray micro-computed tomography
Understanding plant physiological processes in above-ground organs, such as photosynthesis in leaves, requires knowledge of the structural properties of the tissues, including leaf thickness, cell size, and stomatal distribution. Micro-CT allows for undisturbed visualization and quantification of inner structures at an appropriate high resolution.
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Micro-computed tomography for natural history specimens: a handbook of best practice protocols
Micro-CT is increasingly used in a variety of biological research fields: taxonomy and systematics; evolutionary and developmental research; and functional morphology. “The ability of micro-CT imaging to create accurate, virtual representations of both internal and external features of an object, at micrometer resolution, without destroying the specimen, makes the technique an interesting tool for the digitisation of valuable natural history collections. Digitisation efforts have become an important research activity of museums and herbaria, since collections represent a vast source of biodiversity information which is often underexploited due to the traditionally slow process of re-visiting physical specimens.”
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