Fig. 6

Cross and longitudinal sections of tomato (cv. Merlice) leaf petiolule (a, c and b, d respectively) from conventional and contrast enhanced scans (a, b and c, d respectively). Sections from conventional scans (a, b) contain air spaces marked by black pixels, while grey pixels marks plant tissue. Sections from contrast enhanced scans (c, d) contain air spaces “a” in black pixels, cellular materials “c” in dark grey pixels as well as contrast solution “ci” in light grey pixels. Internal structures such as the vasculature “V”, parenchyma “P” and collenchyma “C” cell layers are distinctively visible. The enhanced greyscale images were segmented (not shown) and rendered in 3D with the vasculature removed but dermal layers left intact (e). Removal of the dermal layers resulted in the ability to view the individual cells of the parenchyma and collenchyma (f), where separate cells in the same neighborhood are marked with a different color. The rendered volumes were clipped at 750, 1250, 1750 and 2000 µm (g–j) from the bounding box edge to demonstrate the variance at different sample depths. All scale bars are set at 500 µm while the bounding box is 3000 × 3000 × 4500 µm in size