X-ray microbeam radiotherapy can potentially widen the therapeutic window due to a geometrical redistribution of the dose. However, high requirements on photon flux, beam collimation, and system stability restrict its application mainly to large-scale, cost-intensive synchrotron facilities. With a unique laser-based Compact Light Source using inverse Compton scattering, we investigated the tran...

Electrostatically-actuated resonant microbeam devices have garnered significant attention due to their geometric simplicity and broad applicability. Recently, some of this focus has turned to comb-driven microresonators with purely-parametric excitation, as such systems not only exhibit the inherent benefits of MEMS devices, but also a general improvement in sensitivity, stopband attenuation an...

Vibrations of a fixed–fixed narrow microbeam electrostatically actuated by applying a voltage difference to it and a parallel rigid conductor are analyzed. For gaps between the two conductors that are comparable to the beam’s thickness, the fundamental frequency of the beam may first increase with increasing applied voltage, before suddenly dropping at the pull-in voltage. Available models fail...

Microbeam radiation therapy (MRT) is a new experimental oncological modality, intended for the treatment of inoperable brain tumours, particularly in difficult cases where conventional radiation therapy can cause irreversible damage. MRT consists of an array of highly collimated, quasi-parallel x-ray microbeams aimed at the tumour tissue, delivering high dose within the beam path and low doses ...

Improvements in the argon laser microbeam have made it possible to cause damage to chromosomes of tissue culture cells without prior treatment of the cells with a photosensitizing agent. These results have been confirmed independently in two laboratories.

We present a simulation and experimental investigation of bi-directional tunable in-plane clamped–guided arch microbeam resonators. Tensile and compressive axial forces are generated from a bi-directional electrostatic actuator, which modulates the microbeam stiffness, and hence changes its natural frequency to lower or higher values from its as-fabricated value. Several devices of various anch...

The Columbia University Microbeam II has been built to provide a focused ion beam for irradiating designated mammalian cells with single particles. With the interest in irradiating non-stained cells and cells in three-dimensional tissue samples, the endstation was designed to accommodate a variety of imaging techniques, in addition to fluorescent microscopy. Non-stained cells are imaged either ...

Laser micro-irradiation of cell inclusions has become a useful method in cell biology (1). A pulsed ruby laser microbeam system has been successfully used to study morphological and functional relationships within mitochondria of tissue culture cells vitally stained with Janus green B (2-6) . Recently, an argon ion gas laser microbeam has been used to place lesions on mitotic chromosomes of sal...

A novel synchrotron-based approach, known as microbeam radiation therapy (MRT), currently shows considerable promise in increased tumour control and reduced normal tissue damage compared with conventional radiotherapy. Different microbeam widths and separations were investigated using a controlled cell culture system and monoenergetic (5.35 keV) synchrotron X-rays in order to gain further insig...