Contrast-enhanced 3D micro-CT of plant tissues using different impregnation techniques
Zi Wang, Pieter Verboven and Bart Nicolai, Department of Biosystems KU Leuven – University of Leuven Willem de Croylaan, Leuven Belgium
X-ray micro-CT has increasingly been used for 3D imaging of plant structures. At the micrometer reso-lution however, limitations in X-ray contrast often lead to datasets with poor qualitative and quantitative measures, especially within dense cell clusters of plant tissue specimens. The current study developed protocols for delivering a cesium based contrast enhancing solution to varying plant tissue specimens for the purpose of improving 3D tissue structure characterization within plant specimens, accompanied by new image processing workflows to extract the additional data generated by the contrast enhanced scans.