Since the Greek mythology and over the centuries, the red rose has always been the symbol of love and romance. This month, lovers from all over the world have celebrated Valentine’s Day on February 14th and many of them have followed the old tradition of gifting a red rose.
This scan of the month February features the “love flower” and has been performed by Xinyang Hao (Applications Engineer). X-ray can reveal what the plants hide behind the leaves and inside the stem that we would not be able to see. By using the Nikon Nanofocus transmission target, even fragile objects such as flower petals are possible to scan in all detail and then to be captured in 3D. X-ray CT enables us to non-destructively visualise the internal structure of the red rose with very fine detail.
The X-ray CT scans were acquired using Nikon’s helical acquisition algorithm (X.Tend) at a X-ray energy of 54 kV and an effective pixel size of 79 µm, using the Nikon XT H 225 ST 2x. This system comes equipped with up to three different Nikon microfocus X-ray sources: a 180 kV, 20 W transmission target, a 225 kV, 225 W reflection target and a 225 kV, 225 W Rotating.Target 2.0. The scans were performed using the 225 kV Rotating.Target 2.0 option coupled with a Varex XRD 4343CT flat panel detector. For these scans the detector acquired 3149 projections at an exposure time of 500 ms, resulting in a total scan time of 26 minutes.
Click here to learn how the Nikon X-ray CT technology has also inspired a new book on plant life!
