Abstract
X-ray dark-field imaging can provide inaccessible and complementary information compared to conventional absorption contrast imaging. However, extraction of the dark-field signal is difficult, and sophisticated optics are often required. In this Letter, we report a novel approach to generate high-quality dark-field images using a simple membrane. The dark-field image is extracted from the maximum correlation coefficient by applying a cross-correlation algorithm to a stack of speckle images collected by scanning a membrane in a transverse direction to the incident x-ray beam. The new method can also provide directional dark-field information, which is extremely useful for the study of strongly ordered systems. The potential of the proposed technique for nondestructive x-ray imaging is demonstrated by imaging representative samples.
Highlights
X-ray dark-field imaging can provide inaccessible and complementary information compared to conventional absorption contrast imaging
X-ray absorption contrast imaging has been widely used in medical diagnostics and material science
Even though dark-field imaging is well known in visible light and electron microscopy, it has taken nearly a century after the discovery of x rays for it to be realized in the x-ray regime
Summary
X-ray dark-field imaging can provide inaccessible and complementary information compared to conventional absorption contrast imaging. X-ray dark-field imaging, which is related to the subpixel structural anisotropy or variations in the electron density in samples on length scales smaller than the detector resolution, provides complementary mechanisms to reveal subtle features of the material under study [1]. The x-ray near-field speckle technique was demonstrated to retrieve the dark-field image by scanning a simple phase object (a membrane or abrasive paper) [11].
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