Hard X-ray multi-projection imaging for single-shot approaches

TL;DR

This paper introduces X-ray multi-projection imaging (XMPI), a novel single-shot 3D imaging method that captures multiple projections simultaneously, enabling high-resolution volumetric imaging at ultrafast time scales.

Contribution

The paper presents a new XMPI technique that allows single-pulse 3D imaging without sample rotation, suitable for high-brilliance X-ray sources and ultrafast dynamics.

Findings

Experimental verification of XMPI feasibility

Potential for 3D movies at microsecond to femtosecond scales

Compatibility with high-brilliance X-ray sources

Abstract

Obtaining 3D information from a single X-ray exposure at high-brilliance sources, such as X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) [1] or diffraction-limited storage rings [2], allows the study of fast dynamical processes in their native environment. However, current X-ray 3D methodologies are either not compatible with single-shot approaches because they rely on multiple exposures, such as confocal microscopy [3, 4] and tomography [5, 6]; or they record a single projection per pulse [7] and are therefore restricted to approximately two-dimensional objects [8]. Here we propose and verify experimentally a novel imaging approach named X-ray multi-projection imaging (XMPI), which simultaneously acquires several projections without rotating the sample at significant tomographic angles. When implemented at high-brilliance sources it can provide volumetric information using a single pulse. Moreover, XMPI at MHz repetition XFELs could allow a way to record 3D movies of deterministic or stochastic natural processes in the micrometer to nanometer resolution range, and at time scales from microseconds down to femtoseconds.