Boosting spatial resolution by incorporating periodic boundary conditions into single-distance hard-x-ray phase retrieval

David M Paganin (1) , Vincent Favre-Nicolin (2) , Alessandro Mirone (2) , Alexander Rack (2) , Julie Villanova (2) , Margie P Olbinado (3) , Vincent Fernandez (4) , Julio Cesar da Silva (5) , Daniele Pelliccia (6)

1 Monash University [Clayton]
2 ESRF - European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
3 PSI - Paul Scherrer Institute
4 NHM - The Natural History Museum [London]
5 NEEL - MRS - Matériaux, Rayonnements, Structure
6 Instruments & Data Tools Pty Ltd

A simple coherent-imaging method due to Paganin et al. is widely employed for phase-amplitude reconstruction of samples using a single paraxial x-ray propagation-based phase-contrast image. The method assumes that the sample-to-detector distance is su ciently small for the associated Fresnel number to be large compared to unity. The algorithm is particularly e↵ective when employed in a tomographic setting, using a single propagation-based phase-contrast image for each projection. Here we develop a simple extension of the method, which improves the reconstructed contrast of very fine sample features. This provides first-principles motivation for boosting fine spatial detail associated with high Fourier frequencies, relative to the original method, and was inspired by several recent works employing empirically-obtained Fourier filters to a similar end.

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]; Optique / photonique; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

David M Paganin, Vincent Favre-Nicolin, Alessandro Mirone, Alexander Rack, Julie Villanova, et al.. Boosting spatial resolution by incorporating periodic boundary conditions into single-distance hard-x-ray phase retrieval. Journal of Optics, 2020, 22 (11), pp.115607. ⟨10.1088/2040-8986/abbab9⟩. ⟨hal-02961416⟩