High-throughput full-automatic synchrotron-based tomographic microscopy

At the TOMCAT (TOmographic Microscopy and Coherent rAdiology experimenTs) beamline of the Swiss Light Source with an energy range of 8-45 keV and voxel size from 0.37 µm to 7.4 µm, full tomographic datasets are typically acquired in 5 to 10 min. To exploit the speed of the system and enable high-throughput studies to be performed in a fully automatic manner, a package of automation tools has been developed. The samples are automatically exchanged, aligned, moved to the correct region of interest, and scanned. This task is accomplished through the coordination of Python scripts, a robot-based sample-exchange system, sample positioning motors and a CCD camera. The tools are suited for any samples that can be mounted on a standard SEM stub, and require no specific environmental conditions. Up to 60 samples can be analyzed at a time without user intervention. The throughput of the system is dependent on resolution, energy and sample size, but rates of four samples per hour have been achieved with 0.74 µm voxel size at 17.5 keV. The maximum intervention-free scanning time is theoretically unlimited, and in practice experiments have been running unattended as long as 53 h (the average beam time allocation at TOMCAT is 48 h per user). The system is the first fully automated high-throughput tomography station: mounting samples, finding regions of interest, scanning and reconstructing can be performed without user intervention. The system also includes many features which accelerate and simplify the process of tomographic microscopy.