{"id":237028,"date":"2026-05-13T02:23:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/giving-x-ray-vision-a-sense-of-direction"},"modified":"2026-05-13T02:23:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:23:38","slug":"giving-x-ray-vision-a-sense-of-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/giving-x-ray-vision-a-sense-of-direction","title":{"rendered":"Giving X-ray vision a sense of direction"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Whether in tooth enamel or in nanomaterials made of silicon, the orientation of tiny internal structures often determines the properties of a material. A new X-ray method can even make this nano-order visible when the structures are actually too small to be imaged directly. The method was developed by an international team led by the Helmholtz Center Hereon, and it opens up new possibilities to investigate materials and biological structures. The research is published<\/a> in the journal Light: Science & Applications.<\/p>\n

In medical X-ray imaging, the picture is created by the varying attenuation of X-rays in the body. In order to examine materials or biological tissue in detail, experts use advanced techniques that provide additional information, such as dark-field imaging. This technique exploits the fact that X-rays are scattered, i.e., deflected, at internal interfaces and irregularities. \u201cThe scattering reveals a lot about internal structures that are not directly visible in the actual image,\u201d explains Hereon researcher Sami Wirtensohn, first author of the study.<\/p>\n

To make these fine structures visible, the dark field method blocks the direct X-ray beam. This allows the detector to capture only the radiation scattered inside the sample. Until now, this method has only been able to show that such structures exist, but not how they are spatially aligned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether in tooth enamel or in nanomaterials made of silicon, the orientation of tiny internal structures often determines the properties of a material. A new X-ray method can even make this nano-order visible when the structures are actually too small to be imaged directly. The method was developed by an international team led by the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}