Mesoscale structure of human and mouse enamel*

We recently discovered that apatite exhibit X-ray linear dichroism [1,2] at the Ca L-edge, an effect that enables Polarization-dependent Imaging Contrast (PIC) mapping [3,4] of apatite, to quantitatively measure and display nanocrystal orientations. Here we present PIC maps revealing unexpected and unprecedented observations in the structure and orientation of crystals in human and mouse dental enamels, at the mesoscale, that is, between 10 nm and 10 µm.
1. MA Marcus et al. ACS Nano in press 2017, DOI:10.1021/acsnano.7b05044
2. CA Stifler et al. PRL under review 2017
3. PUPA Gilbert et al. PNAS 108, 2011. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1107917108
4. PUPA Gilbert et al. EPSL 460, 2017. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2016.11.012