The XRD-CT Pioneers

Andrew Beale: There were many - the work can be broken down into four stages: data acquisition, data transformation, analysis, and interpretation. Perhaps the biggest challenge to start with was the data handling but, through technical advances over the years, this has become easier and the emphasis has shifted towards analysis and interpretation. Finden though has developed an efficient pipeline to go from sampling to understanding in a short time frame and I think we are unrivalled in what we offer here.

Andrew Beale: With this technique, we see things that we didn't know were important before we performed a measurement. This allows us a more complete understanding of what makes a material work or fail and this is the first step in developing better materials for the future. Although the capabilities we have developed have largely been demonstrated in materials science, they have also been shown to yield new insights in the life sciences as well.

Andrew Beale: We hope that as laboratory X-ray sources get brighter and detectors more sensitive, these techniques will move from the synchrotron into the laboratory and ultimately into the medical field to hopefully bring about improvements in the health sector as well as the performance of materials.

Andrew Beale: The work we have performed could not have been achieved without the efforts of a number of talented researchers who were originally trained in chemistry, physics, chemical engineering, materials, and mathematics. I think this sort of collaboration helps researchers become more interdisciplinary and this is necessary to tackle some of the major technical challenges that we face today.