2025/04/14 by Clara Magnin, Laurène Quénot, Magnin, Clara +9 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · Materials Science · #Advanced X-ray Imaging Techniques #Crystallography and Radiation Phenomena #Radiation Shielding Materials Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.10665
Phase-contrast and dark-field imaging are relatively new X-ray imaging modalities that provide additional information to conventional attenuation-based imaging. However, this new information comes at the price of a more complex acquisition scheme and optical components. Among the different techniques available, such as Grating Interferometry or Edge Illumination, modulation-based and more generally single-mask/grid imaging techniques simplify these new procedures to obtain phase and dark-field images by shifting the experimental complexity to the numerical post-processing side. This family of techniques involves inserting a membrane into the X-ray beam that locally modulating the intensity to create a pattern on the detector which serves as a reference. However, the topological nature of the mask used seems to determine the quality of the reconstructed phase and dark-field images. We present in this article an in-depth study of the impact of the membrane parameters used in a single mask imaging approach. A spiral topology seems to be an optimum both in terms of resolution and contrast-to-noise ratio compared to random and regular patterns.