Research Areas - (5) Nanoscale X-ray Imaging

Full path: Biology > Biophysics > Nanoscale X-ray Imaging

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics | Pupa Gilbert Research Group @ UWMadison
Summary:

Uses X-ray photoemission electron microscopy (X-PEEM) with XANES spectroscopy at synchrotron light sources to map crystal orientation and amorphous-to-crystalline transitions at ~10 nm resolution in biominerals (coral skeletons, sea urchin spines, mollusk nacre, tooth enamel).

Department(s)/lab(s): School of Physics | Gureyev Computational X-ray Imaging Group @ UMelb
Summary:

Gureyev is one of the originators of propagation-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging and the transport-of-intensity phase-retrieval methods that made it practical; his current work concerns the information-theoretic limits of imaging — how signal-to-noise, spatial resolution and radiation dose trade against one another — and the application of those limits to phase-contrast tomography, ptychography and electron microscopy, including biomedical imaging at clinically tolerable dose. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the shared intellectual core is the noise-resolution-dose triangle: the same estimation-theory framework that sets the pT/sqrt(Hz) floor of an NV ensemble governs how many photons a phase-contrast image needs. Borderline inclusion (X-ray rather than quantum sensing), kept because the technique is explicitly about pushing resolution past conventional limits.

Department(s)/lab(s): Imaging Physics (ImPhys) | Hoogenboom Lab (Integrated Microscopy) @ TU Delft
Summary:

Jacob Hoogenboom develops integrated correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) and molecular nanophotonic imaging. Research: (1) 3-in-1 microscopy combining light, electron beam, and ion beam for precise biological sample sectioning and protein localisation; (2) integrated CLEM for mapping proteins in cellular context; (3) single-molecule nanophotonic sensing using fluorescence. Relevant to advanced single-molecule biosensing approaches.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics and Astronomy | Jacobsen Research Group (X-ray Microscopy) @ Northwestern
Summary:

Prof. Jacobsen's group develops novel methods, instruments, and analysis approaches for X-ray nanoscale imaging and applies them to biology and environmental science, using the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne. Directions: (1) Scanning X-ray fluorescence microscopy (SXFM) for organ-wide and nanoscale elemental mapping of metals (zinc, copper, iron) in biological tissues — central to the NIH-funded QE-Map national resource; imaging how metals regulate cellular functions, synaptic zinc signaling, and neurodegenerative disease; (2) X-ray ptychography and coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) for nanoscale biological imaging beyond the diffraction limit with improved dose efficiency; (3) Development of new algorithms, optics (zone plates), and detector systems to push spatial resolution and dose efficiency in X-ray microscopy — including lensless imaging methods and compressed-sensing reconstruction. Joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne Distinguished Fellow); also involved in QE-Map resource with Kozorovitskiy and Hao Zhang (McCormick).

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics and Astronomy | Vanderlinden Lab @ Edinburgh
Summary:

Willem Vanderlinden uses high-resolution biophysical tools to study protein-nucleic acid interactions. Research: (1) magnetic tweezers for pN-scale force and torque measurements on single DNA molecules and nucleoprotein complexes during retroviral integration, DNA supercoiling, and chromatin remodelling; (2) high-speed AFM imaging of nucleoprotein complexes and chromosomal organisation; (3) quantitative single-molecule statistical analysis of DNA topology. His approach provides cutting-edge spatial resolution to study chromatin biophysics and mobile DNA elements at the single-molecule level.