Three-dimensional brain mapping using X rays
Bert Müller
University of Basel, Switzerland
CIC nanoGUNE seminar room, Tolosa Hiribidea 76, Donostia - San Sebastian
Mato Knez
The human brain contains 86 billion cells, but so far, they could not be visualized in their entirety. The task corresponds to a dataset of petabyte size – analogous to plotting every star in the Milky Way. Towards this aim, we have published the three-dimensional data of a murine brain, about 3,000 times smaller than the human one. This unique dataset was registered to a reference atlas, and made publicly available via browser-based hierarchical viewers, as we know from Google Earth [Adv. Sci. 12 (2025) 2416879]. We have also pushed the limits of computed tomography to the nanometer scale, i.e. beyond the optical limit, and to in vivo animal studies. The next challenges involve acquiring and disseminating a human brain atlas that will create a paradigm for investigating other human organs, high-performance engineering devices, and unique cultural heritage objects related to big data.
Bert Müller has held the Thomas Straumann Chair for Materials Science in Medicine at the University of Basel, Switzerland since 2006. He received his master’s degree in physics from the Dresden University of Technology, Germany, his Ph.D. in experimental physics from the University of Hannover, Germany, and his habilitation in experimental physics from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where he has lectured since 2001. His current research interests include hard X-ray imaging down to the nanometer scale and physics-based research in medicine and dentistry. He was named the 2022 recipient of the SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award.