Funded Projects

Three-dimensional micro-computed tomography (CT) has become a critically important standard technology in dental, musculoskeletal, cancer, and tissue engineering research. Use of this technology has greatly accelerated advances in the understanding of mineralized tissue (e.g. bone and teeth) diseases and the development of strategies for engineering functional tissues by providing quantitative measures of bone responses to physiologic, biologic, mechanical, pharmacologic or disease related influences. Since its introduction into biomedical research, this radiographic based tomographic technology, along with the development of computer reconstruction algorithms, has provided the capability to characterize mineralized tissue structures as it had never been characterized before. As a result, CT has had a significant impact on dental and musculoskeletal health. This is a proposal request to the University at Buffalo to support the purchase of a Scanco CT100 specimen CT system that is to be part of a newly established Core Facility at the University Buffalo, School of Dental Medicine, and shared with other users in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. The requested instrument will fulfill an unmet need for CT at the University by providing increased throughput, increased resolution and ability to analyze denser materials, enabling NSF- and NIH-funded users to make further advances in science and health related research.