Figure 1

Study setup. (a) Visualisation of the orthogonal bone sections. The longitudinal sections were cut parallel to the main axis of the bone, and the radial sections perpendicular to it. (b) Microstructural orientation obtained from micro-CT images of the longitudinal (i) and radial (ii) bovine specimens. Positions for scattering measurements are indicated with yellow circles. (c-d) Experimental setup for SANS and SAXS, respectively, specifying distances between specimen and detector, and the resulting q-ranges (log–log scale). (e) Typical 2D SAXS pattern with detector edges and beamstop masked away (i), example of Gaussian fit, \(g\left( \theta \right)\), to the intensity variation within the azimuthal angle from which the order parameter S was obtained (Eq. 4). (ii) Definition of mineral crystal c-axis orientation, θ, in relation to a reference direction z, both used to calculate the order parameter S (iii). The figure was created using Inkscape (v. 0.92), ImageJ (v1.52i), Matlab (R2019a), and GRASP Barebones (v. 8.14).