From Relativistic Electrons To X-Ray Phase Contrast Imaging

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the use of single crystals for x-ray phase contrast imaging, achieving significantly improved spatial resolution over traditional polycrystalline phosphors, with potential applications in bioimaging.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of single crystals in indirect x-ray imaging, showing enhanced resolution and addressing fiber-optic plate depth-of-focus.

Findings

Single crystals achieve a fourfold smaller point spread function (21 μm) compared to polycrystalline phosphors (80 μm).

Successful imaging of 33-μm diameter carbon fibers.

Potential improvements in fiber-optic plate depth-of-focus are discussed.

Abstract

We report the initial demonstrations of the use of single crystals in indirect x-ray imaging for x-ray phase contrast imaging at the Washington University in St. Louis Computational Bioimaging Laboratory (CBL). Based on single Gaussian peak fits to the x-ray images, we observed a four times smaller system point spread function (21 {\mu}m (FWHM)) with the 25-mm diameter single crystals than the reference polycrystalline phosphor's 80-{\mu}m value. Potential fiber-optic plate depth-of-focus aspects and 33-{\mu}m diameter carbon fiber imaging are also addressed.