Recent developments of more powerful synchrotron sources have led to vast improvements in the performance of X-ray imaging. This is manifested by a continuous increase in the impact of synchrotron experiments in many research areas on materials, in particular solidification science. X-ray imaging has been established as a method of choice for in situ and real-time studies of solidification microstructure formation in metallic alloys, with spatio-temporal resolutions at the scales of relevance. In this article, we present illustrative results of the current capabilities of synchrotron X-ray imaging in this field of research, each of them using different X-ray techniques (radiography, topography and tomography). Those results demonstrate the high potential of these techniques for the investigation of dynamical phenomena in materials processing. (C) 2011 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.