Development of x-ray phase tomographic microscope based on Talbot interferometer at BL37XU, SPring-8

• Main Authors: Hidekazu Takano, Yanlin Wu, Masato Hoshino, Karol Vegso, Koh Hashimoto, Koichi Matsuo, Atsushi Momose
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIP Publishing LLC 2020-09-01
• Series: AIP Advances
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0016318

An x-ray phase tomographic microscope has been developed by optimizing the optical system for 9-keV synchrotron x rays at BL37XU, SPring-8, Japan. The system consists of a full-field x-ray imaging microscope and a Talbot interferometer. In contrast with our previous system, a Fresnel zone plate for the microscope objective and transmission gratings of the interferometer was designed to improve the refraction sensitivity, with a larger field of view and a higher spatial resolution, utilizing a 28-m space available at BL37XU. An x-ray phase tomographic microscope with a field of view of 375 µm and a spatial resolution of 560 nm was thus constructed, even with a considerably low x-ray dosage. By applying this tomographic microscope to auditory bone specimens of young mice, it was shown that soft tissues in addition to bone tissue could be observed simultaneously without serious radiation damage.