Across all branches of science, medicine and engineering, high-resolution microscopy is required to understand functionality. Although optical methods have been developed to `defeat' the diffraction limit and produce 3D images, and electrons have proven ever more useful in creating pictures of small objects or thin sections, so far there is no substitute for X-ray microscopy in providing multiscale 3D images of objects with a single instrument and minimal labeling and preparation. A powerful technique proven to continuously access length scales from 10 nm to 10 µm is ptychographic X-ray computed tomography, which, on account of the orthogonality of the tomographic rotation axis to the illuminating beam, still has the limitation of necessitating pillar-shaped samples of small (ca 10 µm) diameter.
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