Single-shot X-ray Dark-field Tomography

Abstract: X-ray dark-field imaging creates a representation of the sample where contrast is generated by subresolution features within the volume under inspection. These are detected by a local measurement of the radiation field's angular distribution, and how it is affected by the interaction with matter. X-ray dark-field imaging typically requires taking multiple exposures for separating the contributions to the detected X-ray intensity arising from scattering, refraction and attenuation; a procedure often called phase retrieval. We propose an approach to retrieve an X-ray dark-field image from a single X-ray shot. We demonstrate the method using a laboratory-based, rotating anode X-ray tube system without the need for coherent radiation or a high-resolution detector. This reduces the complexity of data acquisition, enabling faster scanning and increasing dose efficiency. Moreover, our approach reduces the problem dimensionality by one, with substantial implications for data-intensive applications like tomography. The model assumes a homogeneous material, and we show this is a valid hypothesis for soft biological tissues by reconstructing dark-field tomography images from data sets containing a single shot per view. We believe our method to be broadly applicable and relevant for many X-ray dark-field imaging implementations, including fast radiography, directional dark-field and for use with pulsed X-ray sources.