The 7th Annual Workshop on Advances in X-ray imaging took place on Wednesday 19 June 2024, at Harwell, Oxfordshire. This is a collaboration between The University of Manchester at Harwell, 3Dmagination Ltd and the Collaborative Computational Project in Tomographic Imaging (CCPi) with the aim of bringing together scientists from different fields to discuss developments and applications of a variety of X-Ray imaging and complementary techniques, and to build international collaborations. It was fantastic to host scientists from all over the country (DLS, STFC, UCL, UoS, The University of Manchester, University of Oxford, University of Warwick, University of Glasgow etc.) and from Belgium, France and Spain.
Professor Jayne Lawrence, Director, The University of Manchester at Harwell, opened the workshop and delivered the welcome speech, followed by presentations from the following speakers.
Dr Sharif Ahmed, Diamond Light Source, UK
Dr Awen Autret, Novitom, France
Dr Mark Basham, The Rosalind Franklin Institute, UK
Dr Ramona Duman, Diamond Light Source, UK
Dr David Eastwood, The University of Manchester at Harwell, UK
Prof Bill Lionheart, The University of Manchester, UK
Dr Federico Sket, IMDEA Materials Institute, Spain
Dr Yentl Swolfs, KU Leuven, Belgium
We would like to say a huge thank you to all our speakers, chairs, sponsors and delegates who helped to make the conference a success. Our excellent speakers presented a variety of complementary imaging techniques (Dual Imaging and Diffraction, fast synchrotron tomography imaging, macromolecular crystallography informed by tomography, combining X-ray tomography/ptychography with laser and electron microscopy) that were applied in various applications (enamel caries, damage of composites, mechanical behaviour of bone scaffolds, aerolised particles: observation of engine ash, filtering and retention in face masks, HSE cough simulator). Challenges in deep-learning, such as lack of training data or insufficient data quality, were addressed and some nice example of deep learning application were presented: multimodal imaging of placenta to prevent stillbirth, enhancing 4D low-resolution datasets, denoising CT datasets, correcting beam hardening and rings artefact. Finally, the workshop revealed the importance of developing bespoke software for every aspect of the imaging chain: X-ray CT simulation to educate and optimise scanning, deep-learning segmentation, 3D image quantification, mechanical information from digital volume correlation, simulation, etc. One step further in the development of imaging techniques is what we call “rich tomography” which allow extracting additional information about the sample properties and state. Future directions into this exciting discipline were highlighted at the end of the workshop.
Techniques/rigs development, data mining and software have been a game changer for many applications over the past workshops and we will expand further this growing momentum during the 8th workshop next year.
Thank you to everyone who presented a poster and congratulations to our three poster winners:
1st Kai Zhang, University College London
2nd Sudip Bose, The University of Manchester
3rd Mehdikhani Mahoor, KU Leuven
