Abstract
X-ray microscopy and tomography can provide the three-dimensional density distribution within cells and tissues without staining and slicing. In addition, chemical information—i.e. the elemental distribution—can be retrieved by X-ray spectro-microscopy based on contrast variation around photon absorption edges and X-ray fluorescence. For a long time, X-ray microscopy has been limited in resolution by the fabrication of zone plate lenses, in particular for the hard X-ray range, which is needed to penetrate multicellular samples. Recent progress in X-ray optics and lensless coherent imaging now pave the way for enhanced imaging tools in neuroscience.
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Acknowledgments
We thank all of our collaborators on the original work reviewed here, in particular Simon Castorph, Sajal Ghosh, André Beelink, Klaus Giewekemeyer, Robin Wilke, and Matthias Bartels. We are thankful to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), the Swiss Light Source (SLS) and Desy Photon Science, Hamburg, for generous beam time allocation and the financial support by DFG Research Center 103 Molecular Physiology of the Brain (CMPB) within the Cluster of Excellence 171 “Microscopy at the Nanometer Range,” Germany.
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Salditt, T., Dučić, T. (2014). X-Ray Microscopy for Neuroscience: Novel Opportunities by Coherent Optics. In: Fornasiero, E., Rizzoli, S. (eds) Super-Resolution Microscopy Techniques in the Neurosciences. Neuromethods, vol 86. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-983-3_11
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