Terms & Conditions

  1. It is a requirement that all Centre users complete online health and safety training and a laboratory induction before being able to run samples on the instrument. The process for this will be explained to users upon initial contact and project discussion. N.B. Under current COVID restrictions, no users are allowed to enter the laboratory and training is online only.

  2. Inevitably, there will be instrument breakdown, maintenance and servicing during the life of the scanner. Although every effort will be made to avoid this coinciding with user scan time, on occasion it will be unavoidable with the possibility of lost user sessions and time on the instrument. Every reasonable effort will be made by Centre staff to reschedule any lost sessions, however this cannot be guaranteed.

  3. The Centre will endeavour to meet user requested scanning dates provided during the proposal application process, however these can not be guaranteed as like-projects will be grouped together at different times (e.g. in-situ rig use).

  4. Total scan time requested by users during the application process must include scan set-up time - this will not be provided in addition to your allotted time (please see here for advice on how long this takes - this should be discussed with Centre staff prior to an application being made).

  5. Prior to scanning, samples must be prepared in a way that they will not shed material inside the cabinet. This can be overcome by using appropriate mounting materials, such as placing the sample inside tubes, straws, etc.

  6. The user must organise sample mounting and preparation materials (e.g. vials, tubes, staining agents) themselves prior to scanning - limited resources exist in the Centre.

  7. All sample health and safety issues must be revealed to Centre staff upon initial enquiry and during the proposal process. Risk Assessments are required for all experiments. All relevant documentation (e.g. COSHH, risk assessments, ethics forms) must be submitted alongside the proposal application form.

  8. We ask that any scanning, reconstruction, post-processing and/or analytical/visualisation assistance provided by Centre staff which leads to publication of tomography data (as journal papers, conference abstracts and proceedings, etc) must lead to authorship of the involved staff. Likewise when assisting with scanning and data analysis for a thesis, the relevant members of Centre staff should be acknowledged. X-ray scanning, reconstruction and analysis is a highly collaborative process from experimental planning, to training, to running the scans, to post-processing assistance, and therefore it is a requirement to acknowledge assistance provided. It also allows us to monitor Centre usage towards REF and other formal outputs.

  9. Trained users must not train other people how to use X-ray instrumentation - this is to be solely done by Centre staff.

  10. User must not install or copy any data from the analysis PCs.

  11. You must have your own external hard drive to store and take away your data. The Centre has limited capacity for storage, and data will be removed from the workstation PCs after 90 days.

  12. We require all users to provide us with an experimental report following completion of your project. This should be provided to us within 3 months of experiment completion.

  13. We require that users clearly label their samples with the primary user name, a contact email, the sample names, and what the samples are. The Centre accepts no responsibility for loss of samples left in the laboratory.

  14. Invoices must be received within 30 days of completion of scanning.

  15. It is a requirement that the Centre is formally acknowledged in all publications, grants, conference abstracts, outreach, and other applications with the following statement:

'Authors acknowledge the University of Sheffield Tomography Centre (STC) funding from EPSRC (EP/T006390/1)' .