Polycapillary optics based enhancement of X-ray imaging in phase contrast tomography

As known X-ray imaging is typically based on the use of attenuation features of radiation in media. For low attenuating materials and samples of similar absorption characteristics, X-ray phase contrast imaging (XPCI), based on the phase shift experienced by X-rays when traversing matter, can be utilized. XPCI, however, is allowed for coherent X-ray sources (at least, partial coherence is needed), the most available of them is known as synchrotron radiation. Another possible solution is postulated by using polychromatic X-ray microfocus sources. In this study, propagation-based phase contrast imaging and tomography were performed using a laboratory X-ray system, the Computed Tomography Station (CTS), installed at XLab-Frascati. This desktop setup is composed of a microfocus source, a CCD detector and a fine rotation stage. Moreover, imaging experiments employing polycapillary optics (polyCO) were performed. Even though phase analysis has already been done for other types of optics, these represent pioneering results comparing phase contrast tomography with and without polyCO. Preliminary results obtained have proved the high potentiality of polyCO systems in the enhancement of the image quality at phase-contrast tomographic studies.