The UK’s national X-ray computed tomography facility is upgrading its equipment to keep pace with demand from researchers and industry. X-ray CT works like a medical CT scanner but for engineering and scientific samples—building 3D images of internal structures without cutting them open. The facility, a partnership between four universities and Diamond Light Source, has already supported hundreds of academic and industry projects, but its existing computers, detectors, and robotic systems are becoming bottlenecks. The requested items include high-spec workstations for advanced data analysis, a controller for high-load in-situ experiments, scatter correction hardware to sharpen images, and a robotic arm that will let experiments run around the clock. These upgrades address a practical gap: as scanning techniques become more powerful, the ability to process and interpret the resulting data often lags behind. If successful, the improvements will accelerate research in fields that rely on non-destructive imaging—such as aerospace manufacturing, battery development, and materials science—where better image quality and faster analysis can shorten design cycles and improve quality control. The project is not fundamental science; it is infrastructure maintenance and expansion, ensuring that existing and future users can continue to access state-of-the-art tools.
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The NXCT is a National Research Facility (NRF) in X-ray computed tomography (XCT) that forms a partnership between Manchester, Southampton, UCL and Warwick Universities and Diamond Light Source. We provide a single point of access to world-class XCT facilities for researchers, in academia and industry, across a wide array of research areas, ensuring the technique remains accessible whilst we continue to push the boundaries of what is achievable. Operational since Nov 2020, we have met all our beam day targets over our first 3 years, delivering 2158 beam days across the NCXT partner facilities, to 666 unique users from 222 organisations. This includes 650 academic projects and 83 industry projects. In May we had our mid-term review and we were awarded “exceptional performance” from the expert panel who were enthusiastic about our scientific outputs and technical development along with our user service and management. As we look to further expand our capabilities and user-base it is essential to continue to add to and update our existing equipment and infrastructure to maintain our reputation as a state-of-the-art facility enabling high quality scientific research. The items we are requesting in this proposal will ensure we continue current operations and add capability through novel equipment and high-spec computing hardware. All the items meet the objective of benefitting multiple users in one or more departments as they will be made available to all NXCT users as well as students and researchers at the partner institutions. Most of the items meet the “invest to save” objective as they replace or expand on existing equipment. A significant portion of NXCT users are PhD students or Early Career Researchers and our free access scheme has supported many as new users or with proof of concept and blue-sky ideas that may translate to grant proposals. In summary the requested items are: At Manchester: High-spec computer workstations for advanced analysis. Five new workstations in the NXCT Digital Imaging Lab will replace old systems, for increased stability and throughput and access to the latest algorithms, increasingly AI-based solutions, for data analysis and training. At Southampton: Deben rig controller and AI-optimised computing cluster. A rig controller to allow user access to high load in-situ experiments and a workstation cluster specifically for training AI models, to be paired with graphics tablets to make producing manual segmentations to train the models easier and faster. At Warwick: Scatter correction technology for improved metrological accuracy. An advanced scatter correction technology to minimise the scatter signal, in Warwick’s Waygate system, to increase the image quality and subsequently the measure confident. At UCL: Robotic arm, X-ray generator and 4X lens. An addition to UCLs novel phase contrast system to provide auto-sample changes, allowing experiments to run 24/7 for increased throughput and experiment length and novel source trajectories. An X-ray generator to underpin a new system to enable novel methods and a Zeiss lens replacement.
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