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Updated: Mar 24, 2026

Energy Dispersive X-ray Tomography for 3D Elemental Mapping of Individual Nanoparticles
Published on: July 5, 2016
Intracellular nanoparticles mass quantification by near-edge absorption soft X-ray nanotomography
Jose Javier Conesa1, Joaquín Otón1, Michele Chiappi1
1Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB-CSIC), Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
Abstract:
We used soft X-ray three-dimensional imaging to quantify the mass of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) within whole cells, by exploiting the iron oxide differential absorption contrast. Near-edge absorption soft X-ray nanotomography (NEASXT) combines whole-cell 3D structure determination at 50 nm resolution, with 3D elemental mapping and high throughput. We detected three-dimensional distribution of SPIONs within cells with 0.3 g/cm(3) sensitivity, sufficient for detecting the density corresponding to a single nanoparticle.
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