Abstract
X-ray phase contrast imaging is a powerful analysis technique for materials science and biomedicine. Here, we report on laboratory grating-based X-ray interferometry employing a microfocus X-ray source and a high Talbot order (35th) asymmetric geometry to achieve high angular sensitivity and high spatial resolution X-ray phase contrast imaging in a compact system (total length <1 m). The detection of very small refractive angles (∼50 nrad) at an interferometer design energy of 19 keV was enabled by combining small period X-ray gratings (1.0, 1.5 and 3.0 µm) and a single-photon counting X-ray detector (75 µm pixel size). The performance of the X-ray interferometer was fully characterized in terms of angular sensitivity and spatial resolution. Finally, the potential of laboratory X-ray phase contrast for biomedical imaging is demonstrated by obtaining high resolution X-ray phase tomographies of a mouse embryo embedded in solid paraffin and a formalin-fixed full-thickness sample of human left ventricle in water with a spatial resolution of 21.5 µm.
Highlights
X-ray imaging [1,2] retrieve information of the sample under investigation by exploiting the absorption, the phase shift or the scattering undergone by the X-ray wavefield traversing the sample material
After assembling and aligning our grating-based X-ray phase contrast imaging (gbXPCI) according to the above described asymmetric 4× Talbot magnification geometry, the system was characterized using a test sample consisting of polystyrene microspheres with a diameter of 700 μm
We have demonstrated the use of a laboratory asymmetric high Talbot order grating-based X-ray interferometer for achieving X-ray phase contrast imaging of biological soft tissues with high angular sensitivity (∼ 45 nrad) and high spatial resolution ( ∼ 21.5 μm)
Summary
X-ray imaging [1,2] retrieve information of the sample under investigation by exploiting the absorption, the phase shift or the scattering undergone by the X-ray wavefield traversing the sample material. A few examples of these X-ray phase contrast imaging techniques are in-line phase contrast imaging [5,6], grating interferometry [7,8] or analyzer-based imaging [9,10]. These methods were originally developed in synchrotron radiation facilities because they require or profit from the high X-ray flux, the high monochromaticity and the higher spatial coherence delivered by modern synchrotron sources. The spatial resolution can be improved by using an X-ray tube with a small source size and by taking advantage of the cone beam to obtain a geometrically magnified image of the sample on the detector plane
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