A compact light source for x-ray tomography applications across length scales (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Laboratory-based X-ray tomography systems with conventional electron-impact sources can provide resolutions from hundreds of microns down to below 50 nm. They are commercially available and widely used for a broad range of applications. However, the limited brightness, monochromaticity, tunability and coherence of such sources require relatively long imaging times (especially at high resolution) and limit their applicability for quantitative, spectroscopic or phase contrast imaging applications. Such applications are served well by synchrotron radiation sources with their extremely high brightness, tunability and monochromaticity. However, synchrotrons are very large and expensive, and typically operated as national user facilities with limited access. An Inverse Compton Scattering (ICS) X-ray source can bridge this gap by providing a narrow-band, high flux and tunable X-ray source that fits into a laboratory at a cost of a few percent of a large synchrotron facility. It works by colliding a high-power laser beam with a relativistic electron beam, in which case the back-scattered photons have an energy in the X-ray regime. This presentation describes the working principle of the Lyncean Compact Light Source, a storage-ring based ICS source, and its applicability to X-ray tomography applications. We provide recent application examples from the field of biomedical phase-contrast imaging that demonstrate synchrotron-like capabilities in a laboratory setting. Furthermore, we explore how such an X-ray source can advance laboratory-based micro- and nano-CT by enabling high throughput or spectroscopic imaging applications.