Evolution of hierarchical phase-contrast tomography on the European Synchrotron beamlines BM05 and BM18: a whole adult human brain imaging case study

Hierarchical phase-contrast tomography (HiP-CT) was recently developed to enable the ex vivo imaging of human organs at multiple scales from whole organ down to near-cellular resolution in localized regions. Using whole adult human brain imaging as a case study, this article shows the evolution and optimization of this technique from its initial development at the BM05 beamline to its transition and current status at BM18. Thanks to the higher spatial coherence, larger beam size, higher energies and larger propagation distances available at BM18 and due to the European Synchrotron's Extremely Brilliant Source upgrade (ESRF-EBS), this transition resulted in significantly improved data quality, resolution, sensitivity and speed. More recently, the implementation of a new generation of larger sCMOS cameras, helical scanning (including dedicated reconstruction algorithm developments), binning at the chip and projections levels, and the design of high-efficiency optics allowed us to progressively improve the trade-off between dose and image quality, and acquisition time. These advances enable whole-organ imaging at voxel sizes ranging from ∼42 µm to ∼15 µm, with acquisition times reduced from ∼18 h to ∼3-6 h, depending on configuration. These acquisition schemes present the current status of full-organ imaging using HiP-CT and represent the constant efforts for improvement of the technique towards the investigation of human organs in health, disease and ageing.