Novel X-ray machine is unveiled

Scientists have demonstrated a refined X-ray technique which can spot tiny variations in bone structures.

The technique uses X-rays delivered by powerful light sources and complex computer algorithms to resolve structural variations as small as 100 nanome

tres across.

Using the technique, the researchers have mapped in detail a bone fragment narrower than a human hair.

Synchrotron scale

Hospital X-ray machines work by passing an X-ray pulse through a body onto radiographic film.

The X-rays pass through softer tissue but are mostly absorbed by hard bone - leaving an image in which the skeleton and tissue are clearly distinguishable.

In recent years, scientists have been scaling up the power of the X-ray, using massive particle accelerators or synchrotrons to deliver much larger radiation doses.

While these cannot be used on humans for obvious reasons, they can be used in research work to reveal details in materials which are too thick for use in electron microscopes.

But X-ray imaging has its own problems, with X-rays difficult to focus or manipulate even with corrective lenses.

What Martin Dierolf and a team of scientists based in Germany and Switzerland have done is to refine these X-ray techniques.

Instead of relying on how X-rays are absorbed by different materials, they have instead focused on how they are diverted or refracted as they pass through different substances. This "phase contrast" signal gives much clearer and detailed results.

They also abandoned using any corrective lenses, firing the X-ray pulse through a pinhole and then collecting the diffracted rays after they pass through the sample.

They then used a powerful computer programme to rebuild a 3D image of the object scanned by rewinding the passage of the X-rays.

"It's like reconstructing a broken cup by playing the movie backwards and by doing that you bring all the X-rays into the sample to see how they've reacted," says Professor Henry Chapman of the University if Hamburg, who reviewed the study.

The sample is scanned with an X-ray beam and a 3D image is constructed by computer

The prototype was tested at the Swiss Light Source synchrotron near Zurich, using a mouse femur fragment narrower than a human hair.

The images obtained show detail down to the cavities in which osteocytes or bone cells reside, and the interconnective channels which are only some 100 nanometers in diameter.

A nanometre is a billionth of a metre.

Pierre Thibault of the Technical University of Munich, who is a member of the research team, says the likely applications are in medical research.

"Our method doesn't scale easily to hospitals and I'm not sure that's what we're aiming at anyway.

"It would be more for pre-clinical studies that are looking for instance at the onset of osteoporosis at the nano scale to see what happens at the scale of the bone cells. That's something we're going to look at in the next few months."

He says there could also be applications in engineering.

"You can look at alloys, how at this scale two different metals combine together because you have such a good sensitivity to different densities you can differentiate the two metals that are in the alloy, or maybe look at fractures inside the materials and see at this scale what's happening."

The Next Superbug Coming ??

In recent years our planet has seen a number of close calls with diseases that could have potentially seen a great number of casualties. But while media outlets give a lot of attention to these very specific outbreaks of disease, there are many epidemics that receive very little attention. But the reality of the most devastating diseases throughout history contends that these diseases will likely appear just as mysteriously as they ever did. But where are some places it could it start?

In 2002 the SARS virus first appeared in China when a farmer contracted it and subsequently died. It went unchecked for three months before authorities caught on and reported that a new disease was making the rounds. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome was contained due to intervention of world governments and soon the world relaxed. Shortly after this Avian Influenza appeared and gave people a scare as birds began dropping from the sky. One thing rarely mentioned was that the disease could only be contracted from direct contact with birds. Then came the Swine Flu H1N1 which was transmissible between humans, but was largely survivable with a fatality rate of around one out of every one thousand. These diseases were all viral in nature. Some of the most damaging diseases in history, including the bubonic plague which claimed some 200 million lives were bacterial diseases and not the product of viruses. Is it only a matter of time before these types of diseases make a comeback?


With the creation of antibiotics, many bacterial diseases were easy enough to fight off. Penicillin, discovered first in 1928 by Alexander Fleming would allow humans a chance at eradicating many diseases that had previously crippled entire civilizations and claimed millions of lives. But as it became used more and more, the diseases got stronger through natural selection. The weaker strains were killed off and only those able to survive contact with weaker antibiotics were able to survive. As a result stronger antibiotics were constantly being created. And yet the diseases were not only interacting inside the body with the ill, but also mingling in the waters as the flushed antibiotics entered the streams. The bacteria survived and entered plants which were surviving in Lakes and rivers will eventually find itself in the stomachs of sharks, according to National Geographic which if they are eaten can mean the bacteria has license to enter our bodies as we are the top of the food chain.


Is it possible the next big disease could happen as a result of these increasingly resistant diseases ultimately finding their way into our population by the very virtue of eating the most dangerous creature in the sea? The horrifying scenario pits man against his own ingenuity, attempting to find away to shield the antibiotic resistant bacteria from evolving fast enough to wipe him out. And after the quelling of SARS and the Plague, surely humankind could resist this as well, but only with the same level of perseverance. And tragically there would be a period before a new antibiotic was made where the bacteria would be able to wreak havoc.