Contrast enhanced X-Ray MicroCT scans of fruit

Incremental improvements in the quality control and preservation of high value fruit products is increasingly reliant on computer modelling and simulations. To obtain representative 3D models of biological tissue, the collected imaging data must be accurate. Although methods exist to capture data in 3 dimensions, none compare to X-ray micro-computed tomography (μCT) in simultaneous throughput and quality. However, because of the high energy nature of X-Ray photons, soft biological materials with similar atomic composition cannot be easily distinguished from each other, resulting in geometric inaccuracies in the derived 3D models. To combat this problem, we have adapted radio-opaque contrast enhancing solutions to mark intercellular boundaries of fruit cortex tissue. Cortex samples from apples and pears were excised and immersed within a cesium iodide contrast solution for up to 2 hours, and were subsequently scanned at a resolution of 3μm. The resulting images show distinctly labelled intercellular boundaries, which helps to improve the image segmentation process and accuracy of the derived 3D models.status: publishe