Reliable material characterization at low x-ray energy through the phase-attenuation duality

We present a comparison of between two polychromatic x-ray imaging techniques used to characterize materials: dual energy (DE) attenuation and phase-attenuation (PA), the latter being implemented via a scanning-based Edge Illumination system. The system-independent method to extract electron density and effective atomic number developed by Azevedo et al. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 63, 341 (2016)—SIRZ—is employed for the analysis of planar images, with the same methodology being used for both approaches. We show PA to be more reliable at low energy x-ray spectra (40 kVp), where conventional DE breaks down due to insufficient separation of the energies used in measurements, and to produce results comparable with “standard” DE implemented at high energy (120 kVp), therefore, offering a valuable alternative in applications where the use of high x-ray energy is impractical.