This review, written from the perspective of the UK National Facility for In Vivo MR Imaging of Human Tissue Microstructure, an initiative to establish a shared 300 mT/m-gradient facility amongst the microstructural imaging community, describes ten advantages of ultra-strong gradients for microstructural imaging.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a noninvasive, real-time, microstructural imaging modality that uses near-infrared light for a point analysis of the bladder-wall microstructure.
A transmission electron microscope (TEM, model FEI CM12) was employed for microstructural imaging and phase analysis.
The latter is based on a classic optical measurement method known as low-coherence interferometry that enables non-invasive, high resolution, two- or three-dimensional, cross-sectional imaging of microstructural morphology in biological tissue in situ.
Spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT), a noninvasive imaging technology that provides an internal microstructural image with high resolution [ 5– 7], is widely used in imaging microstructural biological features in the eyes, nerve fibers, brain, and so forth.
The microstructural images enable the visualization of several tissue layers and structures.
Nevertheless, for many materials systems like polymer nanocomposites, only 2D microstructural images are available even with the state-of-the-art imaging techniques.
Due to the limitation of the imaging range of this system, we only acquired the retinal microstructural images at two depth locations (1 mm and 2 mm, respectively).
Naturally, quantitative imaging of the capillary bed and the determination of microstructural parameters in healthy and pathological tissue might prove beneficial for potential therapeutic interventions.
Ideally this should also include histomorphometry to assess the relationship between microstructural diffusion imaging changes, histopathological changes in WM tracts and regional grey matter damage.
