• Cook, Andrew C.
• Vila-Comamala, Joan
• Planinc, Ivo
• Stampanoni, Marco
• Cikes, Maja
• Wang, Zhentian
• Dejea, Hector
• Bonnin, Anne
• Jefimovs, Konstantins
• Romano, Lucia

Abstract

<jats:p>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 &lt;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 <jats:italic toggle="yes">µ</jats:italic>m) and a single-photon counting X-ray detector (75 <jats:italic toggle="yes">µ</jats:italic>m 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 <jats:italic toggle="yes">µ</jats:italic>m.</jats:p>

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• phase
• interferometry