News

TOMCAT welcomes on board two scientists

The X-ray Tomography group welcomes on board Mariana Verezhak and Goran Lovric as members of the TOMCAT beamline crew. They will both contribute to the further development and realization of TOMCAT 2.0 (S- and I-TOMCAT branches on SLS2.0).

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2021-04-romano

Women in Engineering Materials highlights Dr. Lucia Romano's work

The paper "High aspect ratio grating microfabrication by Pt assisted chemical etching and Au electroplating” by Dr. Lucia Romano & coauthors has been highlighted in the "Women in Engineering Materials" Virtual Issue published on Advanced Engineering Materials. This Virtual Issue draws attention to outstanding works within Materials Science created under the lead of women as principal investigators.

Congratulations to Lucia and the x-ray optics design and fabrication team!

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S-TOMCAT optics hutch has been successfully installed in W1 of 2021

SLS 2.0 approved - TOMCAT 2.0 cleared for takeoff!

In December 2020 the Swiss parliament approved the Swiss Dispatch on Promotion of Education, Research and Innovation (ERI) for 2021 to 2024 which includes funding for the planned SLS 2.0 upgrade. The new machine will lead to significantly increased brightness, thus providing a firm basis for keeping the SLS and its beamlines state-of-the-art for the decades to come. The TOMCAT crew is very excited that the TOMCAT 2.0 plans (deployment of the S- and I-TOMCAT branches, see SLS 2.0 CDR, p. 353ff) have been included in the Phase-I beamline upgrade portfolio. These beamlines will receive first light right after the commissioning of the SLS 2.0 machine around mid 2025. A first milestone towards this goal has just been achieved, with the successful installation of the S-TOMCAT optics hutch during W1 of 2021. The TOMCAT scientific and technical staff would like to thank Mr. Nolte and his Innospec crew for delivering perfectly on schedule. 

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Gianluca Iori at TOMCAT.

BEATS beamline scientist from SESAME synchrotron trains at TOMCAT

TOMCAT welcomes Gianluca Iori, beamline scientist from BEATS - the new beamline for tomography at the SESAME synchrotron in Jordan, to a 3-month training on beamline operations. Gianluca’s visit is part of the Staff Training (BEATS Work Package 2) organized for BEATS scientific staff and SESAME control engineers. BEATS is a European project, funded under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and coordinated by the ESRF.

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3 Post Docs and 1 PhD student join TOMCAT

The X-ray Tomography group welcomes Stefan Gstöhl (Post-Doc), Maxim Polikarpov (Post-Doc), Margaux Schmeltz (Post-Doc) and Aleksandra Ivanovic (PhD Student) as new members. The group also thank everybody who helped making it possible for our Post-Docs and PhD student to join PSI amidst the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Algorithm protocol flowchart.

Automatic extraction of dynamic features from sub-second tomographic microscopy data

A fully automatized iterative reconstruction pipeline designed to reconstruct and segment dynamic processes within a static matrix has been developed at TOMCAT. The algorithm performance is demonstrated on dynamic fuel cell data where it enabled automatic extraction of liquid water dynamics from sub-second tomographic microscopy data. The work is published in Scientific Reports on 2 October 2020.

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4 times compression factor for tomographic data feasible

In a recent study, TOMCAT has shown that lossy compression by a factor of at least 3 to 4 of raw acquisitions generally does not affect the reconstruction quality and that higher factors (six to eight times) can be achieved for tomographic volumes with a high signal-to-noise ratio as it is the case for phase-retrieved datasets. This finding is relevant to current challenges on large tomography data management and storage especially at synchrotron facilities. The results of this study was published in Journal of Synchrotron Radiation.

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microcalcs

Looking into the hints of early breast cancer detection

Microcalcifications are the most important indicator in the diagnosis of early breast cancer. The team of X-ray tomography group, in collaboration with Kantonsspital Baden, has carried out a reader study to characterize microcalcifications non-invasively using grating interferometry. This study reveals a potential way to discriminate benign and malignant lesions at early stage.

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new SPTS Rapier system unpacked

A new etcher is just unpacked!

TOMCAT has a new etcher tool for the fabrication of very high aspect ratio gratings in silicon. The new SPTS Rapier system for silicon deep reactive ion etching just arrived and unpacked from the crate in front of the Laboratory of Micro and Nanotechnology at PSI! We thank the LMN technical staff for the support and the great job of moving in!

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