Several non-destructive imaging techniques offer the possibility to observe rapid phenomena in real time, yet most of these techniques fail when it comes to bulky samples and micrometer precision in three dimensions. Therefore there is clearly a need to develop approaches that address such conditions. We identified the large potential that lies in synchrotron-based x-rays as a probe and developed a direct-space tomographic instrument suitable to provide sub-second temporal resolution with several-micrometers spatial resolution. Selected applications from the field of biology and material science are shown in order to demonstrate the unique capabilities in generating three-dimensional images with very high quality making image segmentation and analysis possible for samples that could, until now, only be studied in two dimensions due to the occurrence of rapid structural changes.