Throughout the development of computed tomographic (CT) imaging the challenges of capturing the heart, with its perpetual, vigorous motion, and in particular the tiny detail within the coronary arteries, has driven technological progress. Today, CT is a widely used and rapidly growing modality for the investigation of coronary artery disease, as well as other cardiac pathology. However, limitations remain and particular patient groups present a significant challenge to the CT operator. This thesis adds new knowledge to the assessment of these difficult-to-image patients. It considers patients with artefact from coronary artery calcification or stents, examining the remarkable diagnostic performance of high definition scanning, as well as material subtraction techniques using dual energy CT, alongside ways in which current technology might be revisited and refined with the use of alternative image reconstruction methods. Patients with challenging heart rate or rhythm abnormalities are considered in three studies; how to achieve diagnostic image quality in atrial fibrillation, the safety of an aggressive approach to intravenous beta-blocker use prior to coronary imaging, and the development of patient information to address anxiety as a source of tachycardia and motion artefact. Finally, the novel application of a single source, dual energy CT scanner to additional cardiac information is considered, with studies of myocardial perfusion CT and delayed iodine enhancement imaging, to identify ways in which non-coronary imaging might be exploited to more thoroughly evaluate a patient’s coronary artery status. These findings are presented in the context of developing technology and together offer a range of potential options for operators of cardiac CT when faced with a difficult-to-image patient.

Slow seismic velocity anomalies are commonly imaged beneath subducting slabs in tomographic studies, yet a unifying explanation for their distribution has not been agreed upon. In South America two such anomalies have been imaged associated with subduction of the Nazca Ridge in Peru and the Juan Fernandez Ridge in Chile. Here we present new seismic images of the subslab slow velocity anomaly beneath Chile, which give a unique view of the nature of such anomalies. Slow seismic velocities within a large hole in the subducted Nazca slab connect with a subslab slow anomaly that appears correlated with the extent of the subducted Juan Fernandez Ridge. The hole in the slab may allow the subslab material to rise into the mantle wedge, revealing the positive buoyancy of the slow material. We propose a new model for subslab slow velocity anomalies beneath the Nazca slab related to the entrainment of hot spot material.

The nasal turbinates of ungulates are complex bony scrolls within the nasal cavity. These intricate bony plates, covered by moist epithelium, provide a large surface area that facilitates a countercurrent exchange of both water and heat between turbinal lining and respired air. Given their functional importance, maxilloturbinate size and structural dimensions may vary among species of different body sizes, activity levels and from different habitats, and may also serve as a predictor of the ability of the species to cope with high temperatures or limiting water resources. This is the first study to measure nasal turbinate surface area in ungulates using high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scanning. Heads of eleven South African bovid species and one European bovid species were successfully scanned and surface area measurements made using stereological techniques. These species included Cape grysbok, springbuck, bushbuck, blesbok, impala, mountain reedbuck, fallow deer, kudu, nyala, gemsbok and blue wildebeest; and represent species of different body sizes, from a range of habitats and with different water dependencies and predator avoidance strategies. The total maxilloturbinate surface area increased with body size for all study species. The surface areas of the nasal turbinates varied rostrocaudally, with the highest surface area occurring approximately midway along the length of the maxilloturbinate bones. The Cape grysbok stood out as having a nasal turbinate surface area of 12.77 cm2/kg, which was lower than the observed trend, the reason for this not being clear from these data. Phylogenetic independent analyses showed that log body mass and water dependence had a significant effect on nasal turbinate surface area, with habitat, distributional range and anti-predator behaviour having no effect. Subsequent phylogenetic species comparisons showed that structural variations in nasal turbinate surface area were phylogeny based due to the close genetic relatedness of the study species, and not associated with any environmental factors. The environmentally linked results for water dependency need further investigation in future studies of larger sample sizes and a broader range of species. Changes in climatic conditions may impact on a species‟ activity patterns, with individuals being forced to make behavioural modifications rather than physiological or anatomical adjustments. However, there is no clear evidence to indicate large differences in nasal turbinate surface area in relation to water dependence. This subsequently rules out the use of nasal turbinate surface area as a predictor to which and how ungulate species will respond to increasing global temperatures.

Consumer- and pharmaceutical-based products are a major component of the chemical industry. In the personal care industry, formulations often consist of a mixture of surfactants and fatty alcohols. The addition of surfactants aids the stability of the formulation. The formulated product microstructure depends upon the preparation conditions as well as the ingredients. Controlling which microstructures form during the production of a formulated product is important as different microstructures can have wildly different physical properties, making some far more favourable than others. This thesis examines several of the processes undertaken in the manufacture of formulated products. The dissolution of a surfactant in a bulk water phase is examined. This is examined in a number of ways; firstly, the dissolution times of the surfactants are measured using electrical resistance tomography. It is found that the dissolution time varies with the agitation rate, agitator size, and addition method. The dissolution is also examined using dissipative particle dynamics to gain insight into the dissolution on a molecular scale. It is found that the surfactant breaks into wormlike micelles on dissolution. If an oil is added to the initial bulk then the dissolution process is modified so that long cylinders are produced with some spherical micelles. Finally, the break-up rate is predicted using a breakage model based on the agitator shear rate and a network-of-zones model. This produces good results. The production and post-shear processing of a sample formulated product, hair conditioner, is examined. Firstly, the mixing in a vessel is examined with electrical resistance tomography. Problems are encountered when the production method involves the use of distilled water as the conductivity is very low; however, the mixing time of the final product in the vessel can be determined. It is also shown that the majority of the structural changes in the post-shearing process are caused by the in-line rotor-stator mixer. The viscosity of the product increases in a linear fashion with the shear rate, while the conductivity increases as a function of the shear rate and the recycle rate. This allows the monitoring of the post-shearing process to be carried out using electrical resistance tomography. This thesis also looks at the possibility of producing a multiple frequency electrical resistance tomography device to monitor formulated product production; however, it has been shown that the conductivity does not vary with the voltage frequency over a usable range. This meant that no further effort was put into developing this, as it gave no advantage over the traditional single frequency technique. Nevertheless, important advances towards better understanding of mixing processes resulted due to the investigations carried out.

Permanent electrode arrays were set up at ten monitoring sites from Whitehorse, Yukon, to Fort St. John, British Columbia, in order to gain a clearer perspective of the effectiveness of electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) monitoring over an annual cycle of freezing and thawing. This research forms part of a longer-term project that is attempting to use ERT to examine changes in permafrost resulting from climate change. Inter-site and intra-site variability were examined by installing and maintaining data-loggers to monitor active layer and shallow permafrost temperatures, air temperatures, and snow depths at each site from August 2010 – August 2011. Additional site information was collected on each ERT survey date, including frost table depths, snow depths, and vegetation heights. Based on nearby community records, the climate in the region has been warming by a rate of 0.3 to 0.5 °C per decade since 1970. The permafrost at all ten sites was characteristic of sporadic discontinuous and isolated patches permafrost zones, and is classified as Ecosystem-protected. Nine of the ten permafrost sites had permafrost that was thinner than the 14 or 7 m penetration depth of the ERT survey (three-layer system consisting of an active layer, permafrost, and sub-permafrost perennially unfrozen zone). The most predictable results were achieved at the two-layer system site (active layer overlying permafrost to the base of the profile) in each of its virtual resistivity boreholes, relative resistivity change comparisons, and mean near-surface apparent resistivity progressions. ERT is an effective method of delineating permafrost boundaries in thin permafrost environments and does show strength when monitoring areas of seasonally frozen ground. Repeat surveys at a site indicate seasonal changes in three-layer conditions, but not as predictably as those in a two-layer system. In order to receive the most accurate information regarding permafrost extent and thickness, it appears ideal to conduct ERT surveys annually, within the same month as the previous year’s survey.

In quantum mechanics, measurements disturb the state of the system being measured. This disturbance is largest for complementary properties (e.g. position and momentum) and hence limits the precision with which such properties can be determined simultaneously. Often, this fact is conflated with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which refers to an uncertainty relation between complementary properties that is intrinsic to quantum states. In this thesis, the distinction between these two fundamental characteristics of quantum mechanics is made clear. At the intersection of the two are "joint measurements", which circumvent measurement disturbance to simultaneously determine complementary properties. They have applications in quantum metrology and enable a direct measurement of quantum states. The focus of this thesis is on the latter. The thesis is structured in the following way. The first chapter serves as an introduction to joint measurements. It surveys the seminal works in the field, doing so in a chronological manner to provide some historical context. The remainder of the thesis discusses two strategies to experimentally achieve joint measurements. The first strategy is to sequentially measure the complementary properties, making these measurements weak so that they do not disrupt each other. The second strategy is to first clone the system being measured, and then measure each complementary property on a separate clone. Both strategies are experimentally demonstrated on polarized photons, but can be readily extended to other systems.

X-ray Computer Tomography (CT) is well suited to the inspection of Fibre-Reinforced-Plastic (FRP) composite materials. However, a range of limitations currently restrict its uptake. The aim of the present research was to develop advanced inspection procedures that overcome these limitations and increase the scope of composite structures that can be inspected by industrial cone beam CT. Region of Interest (ROI) CT inspection of FRP laminated panels was investigated and two data completion methods developed to overcome reconstruction errors caused by truncated projection data. These allow accurate, highly magnified regions to be reconstructed on objects that extend beyond the Field-of-View (FOV) of the detector. The first method extended the truncated projection data using a cosine signal tailing off to zero attenuation. This method removed the strong 'glowing' artefacts but an inherent error existed across the reconstructed ROI. This did not affect the defect detectability of the inspection but was viewed as problematic for applications requiring accurate density measurements. The second method used prior knowledge of the test object so that a model could be created to estimate the missing data. This technique removed errors associated with ROI reconstruction thus significantly improving the accuracy. Techniques for extending the FOV were developed and applied to the inspection of FRP wind turbine blades; over 1.5X larger than the conventional scanning FOV. Two data completion methods were developed requiring an asymmetrically positioned detector. The first was based on the cosine tailing technique and the second used fan beam ray redundancy properties to estimate the missing data. Both produced accurate reconstructions for the 'offset' projection data, demonstrating that it was possible to approximately double the FOV. The cosine tailing method was found to be the more reliable. A dual energy image CT technique was developed to extend the optimum dynamic range and improve defect detectability for multi-density objects. This was applied to FRP composite/Titanium lap joints showing improved detectability of both volumetric and planar defects within the low density FRP. The dual energy procedure was validated using statistical performance measures on a specially fabricated multi-density phantom. The results showed a significant improvement in the detail SNR when compared to conventional CT scans.

Dans ce travail, nous proposons une étude générale des hydrophones, leur fonctionnement suivant le principe de la piézoélectricité, les éléments les constituant ainsi que les brevets et les hydrophones existants. Nous modélisons les courbes de sensibilité à la réception et à l'émission avec le logiciel COMSOL que nous comparons avec des hydrophones en notre possession. Avec ces modèles, nous proposons le design d'un hydrophone potentiel, large bande, viable à de grandes immersions (>6000 m). Nous testons deux nouvelles méthodes de calibration d'hydrophone à basses fréquences (< 2 Hz) que nous appliquons aux hydrophones des flotteurs MERMAID. Dans la méthode «dynamique», la réponse de l'hydrophone est étudiée suite à l'application d'une brève surpression (1000 Pa avec tτ < 1 s), réalisée par le déplacement vertical de l'hydrophone dans l'eau. La méthode «statique» permet d'étudier la réponse du système d'acquisition complet. L'hydrophone est placé dans un caisson étanche dans lequel une surpression est générée par l'ajout d'une colonne d'eau placée au-dessus. Nous déterminons les pôles et zéros de la chaîne d'acquisition des flotteurs. La correction des sismogrammes enregistrés par trois flotteurs MERMAID déployés en mer Méditerranée, nous permet d'estimer la pression générée par le séisme de Barcelonnette à environ 400 Pa (7 avril 2014, Mw = 4,8). Nous validons les données acquises par les MERMAID dans une étude sismologique. Nous étudions les données de six mois d'enregistrements par les trois flotteurs déployés en mer Ligure, développons un protocole de pré-traitement des données que nous validons avec une étude tomographique. / In this work, we propose a general study of hydrophones focusing on their operation, based on the piezoelectric principle, the different elements that compose them and the available hydrophones and patents. We model reception and emission sensibility curves with COMSOL software and compare with hydrophones at our disposal, allowing us to qualitatively estimate the sensitivity. We propose a design for a potential broadband hydrophone, viable at large depths (> 6000 m). We test new methods of hydrophone calibration at low frequencies (< 2 Hz) and apply them to the MERMAID floats hydrophone. In the «dynamic» method, the hydrophone response is studied with a brief pressure variation (1000 Pa with tτ < 1 s), performed by a winch, which vertically moves the hydrophone into water. The «static» method allows us to study the full system response. The hydrophone is placed in a calibration chamber in which a pressure variation is performed with an additional water column. We have determined poles and zeros applicable to the MERMAID. The correction of seismograms recorded by three MERMAID floats, deployed in the Mediterranean Sea, allows us to estimate the pressure variation produced by the Barcelonnette earthquake which is around 400 Pa (April 7, 2014, , Mw = 4,8). We validate the data acquired by the MERMAID in a seismological study. We study data of six months of acquisition of the three floats deployed in the Ligurian Basin, develop a preprocessing method of these data and validate with a tomographic study.

This thesis designs new methods for Q tomography and Q-compensated prestack depth migration when the recorded seismic data suffer from strong attenuation. A motivation of this work is that the presence of gas clouds or mud channels in overburden structures leads to the distortion of amplitudes and phases in seismic waves propagating inside the earth. If the attenuation parameter Q is very strong, i.e., Q<30, ignoring the anelastic effects in imaging can lead to dimming of migration amplitudes and loss of resolution. This, in turn, adversely affects the ability to accurately predict reservoir properties below such layers. To mitigate this problem, I first develop an anelastic least-squares reverse time migration (Q-LSRTM) technique. I reformulate the conventional acoustic least-squares migration problem as a viscoacoustic linearized inversion problem. Using linearized viscoacoustic modeling and adjoint operators during the least-squares iterations, I show with numerical tests that Q-LSRTM can compensate for the amplitude loss and produce images with better balanced amplitudes than conventional migration. To estimate the background Q model that can be used for any Q-compensating migration algorithm, I then develop a wave-equation based optimization method that inverts for the subsurface Q distribution by minimizing a skeletonized misfit function ε. Here, ε is the sum of the squared differences between the observed and the predicted peak/centroid-frequency shifts of the early-arrivals. Through numerical tests on synthetic and field data, I show that noticeable improvements in the migration image quality can be obtained from Q models inverted using wave-equation Q tomography. A key feature of skeletonized inversion is that it is much less likely to get stuck in a local minimum than a standard waveform inversion method. Finally, I develop a preconditioning technique for least-squares migration using a directional Gabor-based preconditioning approach for isotropic, anisotropic or anelastic least-squares migration. During the least-squares iterations, I impose sparsity constraints on the inverted reflectivity model in the local Radon domain. The forward and the inverse mapping of the reflectivity to the local Radon domain is done through 3D Fourier-based discrete Radon transform operators. Using numerical tests on synthetic and 3D field data, I demonstrate that the proposed preconditioning approach can discriminate against artifacts in the image resulting from irregular or insufficient acquisition and can produce images with improved signal-to-noise ratio when compared with standard migration.

The presence of and interactions between structural defects, fluids, and trace elements during deformation play a vital role in the manner in which materials respond to an applied stress. Although the links between crystal defects and trace element mobility have been lying at the frontier of research in Earth sciences, the role of fluids and the underlying physico-chemical processes linking them remain poorly understood. Investigation of these nanometer scale processes requires a correlative approach combining high-spatial resolution analytical techniques. This thesis integrates novel 2D and 3D structural and geochemical mapping methods such as electron channeling contrast imaging, electron backscatter diffraction, scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and atom probe tomography (APT) to interrogate the atomic structure and composition of geomaterials in an attempt to better understand long-standing questions in Earth sciences and build bridges between materials science and geoscience. The processes investigated in this thesis include: 1) the underlying diffusion processes that mobilize trace elements into deformation-induced nanostructures; 2) the mechanisms of trace element segregation associated with fluid inclusions; 3) the influence of fluid inclusions on the mobility of structural defects and trace element mobility; and 4) the initial stages of bubble nucleation in the presence of nanoscale chemical heterogeneities. Ultimately, this research interrogates the feedbacks between deformation and trace element diffusion processes, fundamentally investigating their impact on rheology. More specifically, the thesis investigates the influence of deformation and associated nanostructures on the remobilization of trace elements and, in turn, the influence of trace elements on the nucleation and mobility of nanostructures. The combined work successfully identified two diffusion mechanisms for deformation-induced trace element mobility, characterized fluid-inclusions in APT data, documented two processes that led to proposing a new fluid inclusion-induced hardening model, and documented direct evidence of bubble nucleation on the surface of nanoscale chemical heterogeneities. This work not only pushes the limits of high-spatial resolution analytical techniques including STEM and APT, but the results have significant transdisciplinary implications in the fields of geoscience, materials science, engineering, and analytical microscopy.