BEATS: BEAmline for synchrotron X-ray microTomography at SESAME

What is it about?

The BEAmline for Tomography at SESAME (BEATS) is a X-ray microtomography laboratory providing service to scientists from archaeology, cultural heritage, medicine, biology, geology, materials and environmental sciences. The beamline has a total length of 45 m, and an insertion device providing high X-ray photon flux and a usable beam size of 70×15 mm2 at the sample. The partial spatial coherence of Synchrotron illumination is preserved, allowing phase-contrast imaging of low-absorbing samples. Filtered white and monochromatic beam modalities are available. Full field radiography and tomography with a resolution below 1 micrometer and scan duration down to few seconds are achieved. This paper presents the beamline design, performance, and results from first synchrotron microCT scans. BEATS was established in a collaboration between research facilities in the Middle East (SESAME and the Cyprus Institute), and European synchrotron radiation facilities ALBA-CELLS (Spain), DESY (Germany), the ESRF (France), Elettra (Italy), INFN (Italy), PSI (Switzerland) and SOLARIS (Poland).

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Photo by Yulia Buchatskaya on Unsplash

Photo by Yulia Buchatskaya on Unsplash

Why is it important?

BEATS is the first synchrotron tomography laboratory of the North Africa and Southwest Asia region. Microtomography scans and preliminary results obtained at the beamline demonstrate that this new facility expands significantly the range of scientific applications that can be targeted at SESAME.