Open

The Imaging and Medical Therapy (IMT) beamline a.k.a the Imaging and Medical Beam Line (IMBL) was built as a highly versatile facility for x-ray imaging and radiobiology, for both materials and biomedical research. It provides a large beam area with either a monochromatic, or a broad spectrum.
The size of the x-ray emitting source in the storage ring provides beams with some coherence. The nature of x-ray production using synchrotron accelerated electrons and a superconducting Wiggler magnet, provide high intensities. Especially when compared to laboratory based sources.
The beam coherence is an extremely useful property for imaging, allowing x-ray phase contrast imaging to be exploited. At the moment this combination of intensity and coherence in a beam can only be achieved at synchrotron sources.

Aside from two experiment hutches, IMBL hosts additional infrastructure, including clinical preparation rooms and laboratories. These were designed to support experiments involving un-preserved tissues, and living organisms The large hutch in basement of the Satellite Building will soon allow imaging research to be carried out on human volunteers.
IMBL is the most recent synchrotron beamline to be built for this purpose, and is one of only a few in the world designed for use in human studies.

Research…in a nutshell

The IMBL beamline is used for both X-ray imaging (radiography) and X-ray radiotherapy/radiobiology research.

X-ray radiography is useful in many areas of scientific and technological work. From geology and paleontology, to additive manufacturing, pre-clinical and clinical imaging.

X-ray Radiotherapy is used as a treatment of cancerous and other lesions. New methods of radiotherapy are being researched, using the very bright and highly collimated IMBL x-ray beams.

Radiography is a popular imaging methodology in the clinic. We are aiming to use IMBL’s unique capabilities to make x-ray images of living humans better, and with lower radiation dose.

The beamline is currently the longest on the Australian Synchrotron. The distance from the X-ray source to the center of the Satellite Building hutch is 135 meters.

Since the beams emitted by the synchrotron diverge slightly in the horizontal, this gives IMBL hutch 3B a potential beam width of around 45 cm (depending on the beam energy).

The divergence in the vertical is much less. To generate a larger beam in this direction we employ x-ray crystal optics to expand it.