Influence of diffuser grain size on the speckle tracking technique

Abstract

The speckle-based X-ray imaging technique (SBT), which includes the three imaging modalities of absorption, phase contrast and dark field, is widely used in many fields. However, the influence of the grain size of the diffuser, the coherence of the X-ray source and the pixel size of the detector on the multi-mode imaging quality of SBT is still woefully unclear. In this paper, the whole SBT process is simulated and the influence of these three factors on image quality is discussed. Based on this discussion, the grain size of the diffuser for SBT applications should be limited by the pixel size of the detector and the coherence length of the X-ray source. According to analysis of the noise signal and correlation map, a suitable grain size is an indispensable condition for high-quality SBT images, because an excessively small or large grain size degrades the resolution of the imaging results and generates false signals. In addition, the power spectral density of the measured raw speckle patterns demonstrates that a smaller grain can better retain high-frequency information from an imaged sample. The simulated and experimental results verify these conclusions. The conclusions of this work will be helpful in designing suitable experimental setups for SBT applications and have the potential to promote the performance of SBT in other applications, such as X-ray optics metrology and coherence measurement.