IRENI reveals the molecular composition of a sample

An approach involving synchrotron light allows one to obtain images that depict chemical functionality. An article was
published in Nature Methods on March 20, 2011.

From nanotechwire:

To perform the technique at the Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC) at UW-Madison, Hirschnugl and UWM scientist Michael Nasse built the Infrared Environmental Imaging (IRENI) facilty. The new technique employs multiple beams of synchrotron light to illuminate a state-of-the-art camera, instead of just one beam.

IRENI cuts the amount of time needed to image a sample from hours to minutes, while quadrupling the range of the sample size and producing high-resolution images of samples that do not have to be tagged or stained as they would for imaging with an optical microscope.

“Since IRENI reveals the molecular composition of a tissue sample, you can choose to look at the distribution of functional groups, such as proteins, carbohydrates and lipids,” Hirschmugl explained, “so you concurrently get detailed structure and chemistry.”