Multimodal Phase-Based X-Ray Microtomography with Nonmicrofocal Laboratory Sources

Beam tracking in x-ray phase-contrast imaging provides a simple, effective method for multimodal analysis of specimens with micrometric resolution. Its tomographic implementation with nonmicrofocal laboratory sources (no synchrotron required) yields three-dimensional maps of the real and imaginary parts of a sample's complex refractive index, and of its scattering power. These three independent signals significantly increase the information content obtained from an x-ray tomographic scanner, with strong potential for improved material discrimination in several fields of application, from materials science to biomedical research.