Phase-contrast tomography with low-intensity beams

In newly developed neutron phase tomography, wave properties of neutrons are exploited for the nondestructive testing of the internal structure of matter. We show how limitations due to small available intensities of present neutron sources can be overcome by using an advanced maximum-likelihood reconstruction algorithm. Unlike the standard filtered back-projection, the developed procedure gives reasonable results also when used on very noisy data or data consisting of only a few measured projections. This is demonstrated by means of simulations and also experimentally. The proposed method leads to considerably shorter measuring times and∕or increased precision.