The XFM beamline at the Australian Synchrotron.

The X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XFM) beamline is an in-vacuum undulator-based X-ray fluorescence (XRF) microprobe beamline at the 3 GeV Australian Synchrotron. The beamline delivers hard X-rays in the 4-27 keV energy range, permitting K emission to Cd and L and M emission for all other heavier elements. With a practical low-energy detection cut-off of approximately 1.5 keV, low-Z detection is constrained to Si, with Al detectable under favourable circumstances. The beamline has two scanning stations: a Kirkpatrick-Baez mirror microprobe, which produces a focal spot of 2 µm × 2 µm FWHM, and a large-area scanning `milliprobe', which has the beam size defined by slits. Energy-dispersive detector systems include the Maia 384, Vortex-EM and Vortex-ME3 for XRF measurement, and the EIGER2 X 1 Mpixel array detector for scanning X-ray diffraction microscopy measurements. The beamline uses event-mode data acquisition that eliminates detector system time overheads, and motion control overheads are significantly reduced through the application of an efficient raster scanning algorithm. The minimal overheads, in conjunction with short dwell times per pixel, have allowed XFM to establish techniques such as full spectroscopic XANES fluorescence imaging, XRF tomography, fly scanning ptychography and high-definition XRF imaging over large areas. XFM provides diverse analysis capabilities in the fields of medicine, biology, geology, materials science and cultural heritage. This paper discusses the beamline status, scientific showcases and future upgrades.

Preclinical radiotherapy at the Australian Synchrotron's Imaging and Medical Beamline: instrumentation, dosimetry and a small-animal feasibility study.

Therapeutic applications of synchrotron X-rays such as microbeam (MRT) and minibeam (MBRT) radiation therapy promise significant advantages over conventional clinical techniques for some diseases if successfully transferred to clinical practice. Preclinical studies show clear evidence that a number of normal tissues in animal models display a tolerance to much higher doses from MRT compared with conventional radiotherapy. However, a wide spread in the parameters studied makes it difficult to make any conclusions about the associated tumour control or normal tissue complication probabilities. To facilitate more systematic and reproducible preclinical synchrotron radiotherapy studies, a dedicated preclinical station including small-animal irradiation stage was designed and installed at the Imaging and Medical Beamline (IMBL) at the Australian Synchrotron. The stage was characterized in terms of the accuracy and reliability of the vertical scanning speed, as this is the key variable in dose delivery. The measured speed was found to be within 1% of the nominal speed for the range of speeds measured by an interferometer. Furthermore, dose measurements confirm the expected relationship between speed and dose and show that the measured dose is independent of the scan direction. Important dosimetric parameters such as peak dose, valley dose, the collimator output factor and peak-to-valley dose ratio are presented for 5 mm × 5 mm, 10 mm × 10 mm and 20 mm × 20 mm field sizes. Finally, a feasibility study on three glioma-bearing rats was performed. MRT and MBRT doses were prescribed to achieve an average dose of 65 Gy in the target, and magnetic resonance imaging follow-up was performed at various time points after irradiation to follow the tumour volume. Although it is impossible to draw conclusions on the different treatments with such a small number of animals, the feasibility of end-to-end preclinical synchrotron radiotherapy studies using the IMBL preclinical stage is demonstrated.

Design and construction of multicrystal analyser detectors using Rowland circles: application to MAD26 at ALBA.

A concept is given for describing multicrystal analyser detectors (MADs), as they are in use for synchrotron powder diffraction, on the basis of the Rowland circle construction. The Rowland circle is typically used to describe focusing geometries and can be adapted for the case of MADs working at a single energy as well as in a limited energy range. With this construction it is also possible to quantify and optimize the walk of the beam along non-central crystals which is inevitable in certain detector designs. The results of this geometrical inspection are correlated with a real detector design that is implemented at the ALBA synchrotron facility in Spain. An error budget is given to estimate the influence and amount of tolerance of the manufacturing process.