Abstract

During the last two decades micro-computed tomography has become the method of choice for the non-destructive assessment and quantitative morphometry of hard tissues in three dimensions. With the advent of third-generation synchrotron radiation sources, micro-computed tomography in the micrometer range has become feasible and has been employed to analyze local bone tissue properties. However, owing to limitations regarding the tradeoff between object size and spatial resolution, non-destructive conventional global computed tomography of hard tissues, such as bone, remains unachievable in the submicrometer domain so far. Here, we report on a post-processing technique for the assessment of hard tissues using local synchrotron radiation-based computed tomography, which overcomes this experimental limitation.