X-ray dark-field and phase-contrast imaging using a grating interferometer

Abstract

In this letter, we report results obtained with a recently developed approach for grating-based x-ray dark-field imaging [F. Pfeiffer et al., Nat. Mater. 7, 134 (2008)]. Since 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 micron and submicron length scales. Our approach is fully compatible with conventional transmission radiography and the grating-based hard x-ray phase-contrast imaging scheme [F. Pfeiffer et al., Nat. Phys. 2, 258 (2006)]. Since it can be used with standard x-ray tube sources, we envisage widespread applications to x-ray medical imaging, industrial nondestructive testing, or security screening.