UGCT: New X-ray radiography and tomography facility

The UGCT (University Gent Computer Tomography) facility, a cooperation between the Radiation Physics research group and the Sedimentary Geology and Engineering Geology research group is a new CT facility providing a large range of scanning possibilities. Formerly a Skyscan 1072 was used to perform X-ray micro-CT scans at the UGCT facility and although this is a very powerful instrument, there were needs for a higher resolution and more flexibility. Therefore, the UCGT facility started the construction of a multidisciplinary micro-CT scanner inside a shielded room with a maximum flexibility of the set-up. The X-ray tube of this high-resolution CT scanner is a state-of-the-art open-type device with dual head: one head for high power micro-CT and one for sub-micro- or also called nano-CT. An important advantage of this scanner is that different detectors can be used to optimize the scanning conditions of the objects under investigation. The entire set-up is built on a large optical table to obtain the highest possible stability. Due to the flexible set-up and the powerful CT reconstruction software “Octopus”, it is possible to obtain the highest quality and the best signal-to-noise of the reconstructed images for each type of sample.