title: Hard-X-ray dark-field imaging using a grating interferometer.
abstract: Imaging with visible light today uses numerous contrast mechanisms, including bright- and dark-field contrast, phase-contrast schemes and confocal and fluorescence-based methods. X-ray imaging, on the other hand, has only recently seen the development of an analogous variety of contrast modalities. Although X-ray phase-contrast imaging could successfully be implemented at a relatively early stage with several techniques, dark-field imaging, or more generally scattering-based imaging, with hard X-rays and good signal-to-noise ratio, in practice still remains a challenging task even at highly brilliant synchrotron sources. In this letter, we report a new approach on the basis of a grating interferometer that can efficiently yield dark-field scatter images of high quality, even with conventional X-ray tube sources. Because the image contrast is formed through the mechanism of small-angle scattering, it provides complementary and otherwise inaccessible structural information about the specimen at the micrometre and submicrometre length scale. Our approach is fully compatible with conventional transmission radiography and a recently developed hard-X-ray phase-contrast imaging scheme. Applications to X-ray medical imaging, industrial non-destructive testing and security screening are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland. franz.pfeiffer@psi.ch
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pfeiffer
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bech
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bunk
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kraft
authors.forename: E F
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: Eikenberry
authors.forename: Ch
authors.initials: Ch
authors.lastname: Brönnimann
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Grünzweig
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: David