U of A’s MICRO Lab Reaches its One-Year Milestone

The MicroCT Imaging Consortium for Research and Outreach Lab, or MICRO, has reached its first-year anniversary mark.

Thanks to a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Grant, MICRO was established in April 2018 with a Nikon XT H 225 ST micro computed tomography scanner at its core. The imaging system is located in the J.B. Hunt Center of Academic Excellence Building.

MICRO is managed by the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and focuses on scientific imaging of objects ranging anywhere in size from a grain of rice to a basketball, and allows the internal geometry of these objects to be visualized.

Since getting up and running, MICRO has scanned a wide variety of objects from many different fields including:

• Archaeology — pottery, engraved shells, seed bag
• Anthropology and comparative biology — monkey skulls, vole skulls, teeth, turtle heads
• Geology — sediment, sandstone, geodes
• Botany — blackberries, pine cones
• Mechanical engineering — 3D printing, stents

Learn more by following MICRO’s social media accounts under “UArk MICRO” on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. MICRO also has a YouTube channel, where you can find its birthday video showing some of the objects that have been scanned this past year.

Please also visit MICRO online at micro.uark.edu. To request a tour of the MICRO facility, email micro@uark.edu.

A version of this story also appeared in the U of A’s Newswire publication.