A new paper out today in Physical Review Letters shows a demonstration of an X-ray imaging method that uses the a high-brilliance lab source to form at once four images. In addition to the traditional absorption image, the approach yields differential phase-contrast images (along x and y) as well as a dark-field image, which quantifies the density of unresolvable features in a sample.
The work was conducted by Dr. Irene Zanette from the Technische Universität München and co-workers from the same institution, and from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. The method is based on the ability to track tiny variations incurred to an X-ray beam when a sample is placed in its way. To track these changes, the incident wavefront is “scrambled” using a static modulator – here a piece of sandpaper.
Absorption, phase, and dark-field signals extracted from a single X-ray measurement.
Essential for this work was the high-brilliance source developed by the KTH team. Our group contributed the data analysis part, helping with the speckle-tracking algorithms.
