The researchers revealed that X-rays have long been known to damage living tissue beyond a certain dose, and as a result, there are clear medical indications for X-rays to limit radiation exposure. Researchers rely on increasingly powerful X-ray sources in basic research into the properties and characteristics of mineralized tissue samples such as bone. Fish and mammal bones
“Until now, the motto was actually: more flux and more energy is better, because you can achieve greater depth of field and higher resolution with more intense X-rays,” said Dr. Paul Zaslansky of Charite-Universitatsmedizin. Zaslansky and his team have now analyzed fish and mammal bone samples at the MySpot beamline on BESSY II. BESSY II generates a wide range of well-characterized X-rays, precisely focused in an intermediate energy range that makes it possible to understand the finest structures and even the chemical and physical processes of materials. “Thanks to the sensitive detectors and the rather mild irradiation conditions at BESSY II compared to the harder X-ray synchrotron sources, we were able to demonstrate in our different bone samples that collagen fibers are damaged by absorption of radiation in mineral nanocrystals,” summarizes Zaslansky. the results of the study.
Imaging the protein fibers “We examined the samples under second harmonic generation laser scanning microscopy to image the protein fibers,” explains first author Katrein Sauer, who is doing her Ph.D. in the team by Zaslansky. Together with the HZB expert, Dr. Ivo Zizak, irradiated bone samples from pike, pigs, cattle and mice with precisely calibrated X-ray light.
Destruction trail The beams left a destruction trail that is clearly visible in confocal and electron microscopy images. “High-energy photons from X-ray light trigger a cascade of electron excitations. The ionization of calcium and phosphorus in the mineral then damages proteins such as collagen in the bone,” says Sauer. Collagen breakdown increases with the duration of irradiation, but also appears even with short irradiation at high flux.
Minimum doses for research on living materials “X-ray methods are considered non-destructive in materials research, but at least for research on bone tissue this is not true,” said Zaslansky. “We have to be more careful in basic medical research that we don’t damage the very structures we really want to analyze.” So, as everywhere in medicine, and even when there is no living tissue and DNA to damage, it is a matter of using a minimum dose to obtain the information that reflects the material state without causing damage. (ANI)
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