MRI: Development of microXROMM for high-resolution X-ray motion imaging of small animals

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An award is made to Brown University to develop a new biological imaging technology, “micro-XROMM.” This microXROMM instrument will have ten times the precision of current XROMM (X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology). Greater precision will open up new research areas to study the bones, joints, and muscles of animals that are too small for current XROMM, such as mice, frogs, bats and birds. MicroXROMM will enable discoveries such as how small frogs can jump so far and how the shoulders of bats can allow the amazing range of wing movements in flight. Such discoveries offer fundamental insights into the biomechanics of the natural world, and also form the basis for biologically-inspired engineering designs. This project will provide training for the next generation of instrumentalists by including undergraduate and graduate students in microXROMM design and testing. Students will be drawn from diverse communities including historically under-represented groups, thus recruiting the best available talent into science and technology development. Technology development projects such as this one increase US economic competitiveness through home-grown innovation.In the field of Comparative Biomechanics, XROMM has opened up whole new areas of research on the skeletal kinematics of animal movements (walking, chewing, swimming, etc.). However, more than half of all vertebrate species are too small for current XROMM precision. The microXROMM instrument will have ten times the spatial precision of current XROMM (improved from 0.1 mm to 0.01 mm), and temporal precision will be at least 1 ms (1000 frames per second). The addition of microXROMM will open the door for XROMM research on speciose small-bodied groups such as rodents, bats, songbirds, tropical frogs, skinks, anoles, coral reef fish, gobies and minnows. MicroXROMM will enrich basic research in comparative biomechanics, bioinspired design and organismal and evolutionary biology more broadly. For example, microXROMM will be suitable for studying gene knockout mouse strains, making it particularly powerful for genome to phenome studies. The products of this development project will be: (1) a multi-user microXROMM instrument at Brown University; (2) peer-reviewed publications describing the design and validating the instrument for research on species such as mice, fish and songbirds; (3) commercial availability of the system for purchase by other researchers from a US small business partner. This award is supported by the MRI program funds, and by co-funding from the Physiological Mechanisms and Biomechanics program in the NSF-BIO Division of Integrative Organismal Systems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.