Review of the State of the Art Using µCT to Elucidate Complex Vascular Systems of Plants

Abstract

Computer tomography was introduced for medical imaging in the early 1970s but, soon after, was also applied in both the natural sciences and the materials sciences. Since then, as a non-destructive diagnostic tool, it has also provided impressive insights into the morphology and anatomy of plants and animals. A particular advantage is the examination of tissues in their natural spatial arrangement. The position and distribution of the various tissues provide information on possible biomechanical properties in addition to purely morphological insights. Biomechanical information is important for a comprehension of the structure–function relationship and the subsequent transfer to innovative biomimetic applications in technology. This chapter presents previous work on the analysis of three-dimensional structures of complex vascular systems in several plant species by means of µCT, up to the state of the art. This includes technical conditions of the CT scans and methods for the segmentation of ROIs. Special attention will be paid to the possibilities that arise from the knowledge about structure–function relationships in plant materials. Potential innovative biomimetic developments and sustainable technical developments are considered. In doing so, the possibilities of µCT analyses and the evaluation options are discussed in general and, in addition, the possibilities that arise when µCT analyses are combined with other methods like finite element analyses or three-dimensional deformation analyses (digital image correlation) are presented.