High resolution digital radiographic images of wood using CMOS image sensors.

GÓMEZ BERISSO, M.; SERGENT, A.S.; SOFO HARO, M.; BLOSTEIN, J.B.; MARTINEZ-MEIER, A.; DALLA-SALDA, G.; PÉREZ, M.; SIDELNIK, I; ASOREY, H.; LIPOVETZKY, J, ; VARELA, S.A.; ALCALDE BESSIA, F.; ARNALDI, H.

Bariloche

Conferencia; Adapting forest ecosystems and wood products to biotic and abiotic stress; 2019

Blostein JB, Arnaldi H, Asorey H, Martinez-Meier A

The technique to obtain wood microdensity profiles using X-rays is well known and widelydeveloped. It allows describing the tree ring wood density variation. Under environmentalconstraining conditions, tree rings may be constituted by only a few rows of cells. Describing and identifying wood density variation in these rings remain tedious for high-phenotyping wood properties and is usually costly. In this work, high-resolution X-ray images of 2.25 mm thick strips (commonly used in microdensity) of Austrocedrus chilensis wood were obtained using direct detection on a CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) image sensor. The CMOS image sensor is a commercial integrated circuit originally developed for acquisition of pictures in low cost consumer electronic systems. The detector has 1.3 million pixels, with a pixel pitch of 5.2 μm in both directions. Two X-ray sources were used. The first one has a Cu anode providing 8 and 9 keV photons, and the second one has a W anode providing a more penetrating continuous spectra up to 70 keV. The radiographic images obtained using X-rays from the Cu anode provided a contrast up to a 25% along the external identification of rings separated by only 47 μm. The high resolution even allows the identification of the single cell structures of the tested sample.