Construction and evaluation of a high-energy grating-based x-ray phase-contrast imaging setup

Interferometric x-ray imaging becomes more and more attractive for applications such as medical imaging or non-destructive testing, because it provides the opportunity to obtain additional information on the internal structure of radiographed objects. 12 Therefore, three types of images are acquired: An attenuation image like in conventional x-ray imaging, an image of the differential phase-shift generated by the object and the so called dark-field image, which contains information about the object’s granularity even on sub-pixel scale. 3 However, most experiments addressing grating-based x-ray phase-contrast imaging with polychromatic sources are restricted to energies up to about 40 keV. For the application of this imaging method to thicker objects like human specimens or dense components, higher tube voltages are required. This is why we designed and constructed a laboratory setup for high energies, which is able to image larger objects. 4 To evaluate the performance of the setup, the mean visibility of the field of view was measured for several tube voltages. The result shows that the mean visibility has a peak value of 23% at a tube voltage of 60 kV and is constantly greater than 16% up to a tube voltage of 120 kV. Thus, good image quality is provided even for high energies. To further substantiate the performance of the setup at high energies, a human ex-vivo foot was examined at a tube voltage of 75 kV. The interferometric x-ray images show a good image quality and a promising diagnostic power.