Correcting directional dark field x-ray imaging artefacts using position dependent image deblurring and attenuation removal

Autor: Michelle K. Croughan, David M. Paganin, Samantha J. Alloo, Jannis N. Ahlers, Ying Ying How, Stephanie A. Harker, Kaye S. Morgan
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: Scientific Reports, Vol 14, Iss 1, Pp 1-14 (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2045-2322
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-68659-2
Popis: Abstract In recent years, a novel x-ray imaging modality has emerged that reveals unresolved sample microstructure via a “dark-field image”, which provides complementary information to conventional “bright-field” images, such as attenuation and phase-contrast modalities. This x-ray dark-field signal is produced by unresolved microstructures scattering the x-ray beam resulting in localised image blur. Dark-field retrieval techniques extract this blur to reconstruct a dark-field image. Unfortunately, the presence of non-dark-field blur such as source-size blur or the detector point-spread-function can affect the dark-field retrieval as they also blur the experimental image. In addition, dark-field images can be degraded by the artefacts induced by large intensity gradients from attenuation and propagation-based phase contrast, particularly around sample edges. By measuring any non-dark-field blurring across the image plane and removing it from experimental images, as well as removing attenuation and propagation-based phase contrast, we show that a directional dark-field image can be retrieved with fewer artefacts and more consistent quantitative measures. We present the details of these corrections and provide “before and after” directional dark-field images of samples imaged at a synchrotron source. This paper utilises single-grid directional dark-field imaging, but these corrections have the potential to be broadly applied to other x-ray imaging techniques.
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