X-ray micro-radiography and microscopy of seeds

摘要

Furred, fringed, and barbed, these fruits with tiny seeds-each seed no bigger than 3 mm across-look almost guaranteed to get stuck in your socks. However, biologist Viktor Sykora of Charles University and his colleagues at Czech Technical University in Prague saw the seeds not as common stickers but as works of art. To image the seeds' fine details, the team used high-resolution, high-contrast x-rays (left) along with traditional microscopy (right). The most challenging part of the 20-hour process, Sykora says, was to find a wayto fix the seeds in place using a material that would be invisible in the final image. Although high-resolution x-rays are commonly used to visualize the internal structures of small objects without destroying them, according to the authors it has never before been applied to the visualization of seeds.